


The Exiles

by dining_alone



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Minor Finn/Rose Tico, POV Alternating, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-01-10 18:56:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18413897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dining_alone/pseuds/dining_alone
Summary: A failed assassination attempt prompts Rey and Kylo Ren to reckon with the bond they still share.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey look, it’s my first real attempt at something longer and plottier! I’ve got four more chapters drafted already...sort of like a down payment on a fic. :)

 

The news reached Rey halfway through Dxun's night cycle. Still a light sleeper, she woke to Finn’s and Rose's hushed voices.

"This must be really big," whispered Rose. "They've never called a meeting in the middle of the night before."

"I doubt it's good news." Finn sounded grim.

"It might be. Maybe General Hux fell down a reactor shaft."

Finn snorted. Deciding now was a good time to let them know she was awake, Rey rolled in her bunk to face her friends. She found them half-dressed, dimly illuminated by the light of Onderon's lesser moons, Rose pulling on boots while Finn buttoned his shirt.

"Good, you're already up," said Finn, sounding relieved. Rey felt a twinge of guilt; once he had tried to wake her by gently tapping her on the shoulder, and Rey, acting out of pure scavenger instinct, had punched him directly in the solar plexus. "Listen, I ran into Poe on the way to the 'fresher. He says Ematt's called a meeting in the mess hall for the start of first cycle."

Rey sat up abruptly. General Ematt, the Resistance's spymaster, had been off-base for months now on a mission. As far as she knew, he wasn't expected to return anytime soon. "Ematt's back?"

Finn nodded. "Landed a few hours ago."

A mix of excitement and trepidation surged within her, and Rey practically leapt out of the bunk. It had been so long since they'd heard any real news. Despite its position in the Inner Rim, Dxun often felt remote, cut off from the wider galaxy—which, she supposed, was why the Resistance chose it for their primary base.

In some ways, the little jungle moon reminded her of Jakku. Physically, the two couldn’t be more different—Dxun was lush while Jakku was barren and bone-dry—but there was the same aura of isolation, the same sense that the planet could wink out of existence in an instant and all of galactic society would be none the wiser.

Of course, Rey thought as she followed Finn and Rose down the moonlit-dappled path through the jungle, the crucial difference between Dxun and Jakku was that she actually had _friends_ on Dxun. The little planetoid might be hot, sticky, and crawling with insects, but it was the closest Rey had ever felt to being home.

After a short hike, the base's main complex came into view: ancient, hulking durasteel structures corroded with age and half-buried in vegetation. A cheery logistics officer had once informed Rey that thousands of years ago, before Dxun's infamous beasts were hunted to extinction, the base served as a Mandalorian command center. The fact that the facility hadn't been entirely consumed by the jungle in the intervening millennia was testament to the Mandalorians' construction skills.

"Looks like we're late to the party," Finn said. The lights were on in the mess hall, and a harried-looking lieutenant stood outside the entrance, ushering stragglers inside. Rose broke into a run.

"Don't trip!" Finn yelled after her.

Rose responded with a rude hand gesture, and Rey felt a sudden pang of affection towards her friends—mixed in with something perhaps less benign. In spite of all the bickering and mockery that passed between them, there was an easy warmth to Finn and Rose's interactions that she couldn't help but envy. Rey knew their friendship with her was genuine—Finn had put his life on the line for her, and Rose told her in no uncertain terms that she would do the same—but there was a kind of caution in the way they looked at her sometimes, like she was a delicate piece of machinery that would snap in half if they handled her too roughly.

And then there was the scene Rey witnessed last week. Returning from a long shift in the hangar, poncho thrown over her head to shelter from the late afternoon thunderstorm, Rey opened the door to the cabin she shared with Finn and Rose and found the two of them pressed together, halfway undressed. Rose had immediately yelped and jumped away from Finn, who stayed rooted in place, wide-eyed, while Rey stammered out an apology and quickly retreated from the room. None of them mentioned the incident afterwards, but their interactions with Rey had carried a faint undercurrent of awkwardness ever since.

Rey wondered if one or both of them secretly hoped she would be reassigned to a different bunk. Her stomach took a queasy turn at the idea.

"Hurry up," called the lieutenant at the door, rescuing her from that toxic line of thought. "They've already started."

All of the seats were taken when they arrived, so the three of them stood near the back. Rey instinctively scanned the room for Chewie's towering, friendly figure before she remembered that the Wookiee had left on a diplomatic mission to Kashyyyk several days ago.

Peering between the heads and shoulders of the people in front of her, she caught sight of General Ematt, silver-haired and straight-backed, standing before the assembled crowd near the entrance to the kitchens. He was flanked by Poe Dameron, looking uncharacteristically serious on his right, and General Organa, seated to his left. The expression on Leia's face gave Rey pause; she was staring into the middle distance, eyebrows knit together, clutching her walking stick like a lifeline. Whatever news they were about to hear, it wasn't good.

But before the morbid possibilities could start swirling in her mind, General Ematt cleared his throat. The subdued murmuring that filled the room stopped at once. "As some of you may be aware," Ematt began, "the Resistance has several covert agents operating in enemy territory, posing as First Order soldiers and technicians. For security purposes, the intelligence they provide is usually kept classified. However, after conferring with my fellow ranking officers—" he nodded to Leia and Poe "—I have decided that this particular piece of information is significant enough to merit sharing with all of you."

Ematt paused, giving them time to let his words sink in. Rey noticed Leia tighten her grip on the walking stick.

Ematt cleared his throat again. "Kylo Ren is dead," he said.

A few seconds of shocked silence followed this pronouncement, and then the room erupted in a host of disparate reactions. A few people, most notably Rose, cheered. Others turned to their neighbors and began speaking in rapid whispers. Rey, for her part, felt as though all the oxygen had suddenly fled her body. She put a hand against the nearby wall to steady herself.

Finn was watching her, concerned. "Rey—" he began.

She shook her head. She couldn't speak to him right now, couldn't speak to anyone. Her eyes were drawn to where Leia sat at the front of the room, still gazing straight ahead, wearing an expression that might look like stoicism to some, but which Rey recognized as anguish.

It took her a moment to register that Ematt was still speaking. "Ren's death was ruled an accident," he continued. "The official story is that a sub-light engine malfunction caused his shuttle to explode mid-flight. However, our agents claim there is reason to suspect foul play. General Armitage Hux and Ren had a well-documented rivalry, and Ren's death left a power vacuum which Hux has already begun to fill. Our agents report that he declared himself Grand Marshal of the First Order in a private ceremony several cycles ago."

Rey's mind was reeling. _A shuttle explosion?_ It didn't seem possible. She couldn't imagine a less fitting end for him. The idea that something as mundane as an engine malfunction could kill Kylo Ren struck her as beyond absurd.

Then Rey glanced up and caught Leia's eye. The older woman was staring at her, intent, and Rey abruptly remembered that Leia was the only living person who knew about the connection she and Kylo Ren once shared. Alone in the captain's quarters on the Falcon, after the heavy losses they took on Crait, Rey had confessed it all to her, and Leia in turn promised that everything Rey said would remain between the two of them. Finn, Rose, Poe, the rest of the Resistance—none of them knew what really happened on Snoke's ship that day. None of them knew about the bond she had shared with one of their greatest enemies.

Perhaps it was the Force, or perhaps it was just the look on the General's face, but Leia seemed to be asking Rey _is it true?_ _Is it true my son is dead?_

So Rey did the only thing she could think to do, something she hadn't done in years. There, in the crowded mess hall, she closed her eyes and opened her mind to Kylo Ren.

She expected to find nothing but a void in the Living Force, like the one Luke left behind. What she _didn't_ expect was to sense Kylo Ren immediately, but there he was: tired, hungry, burning with thwarted rage, and very much alive.

Before the surprise could sink in, Rey felt his emotions begin to shift. Anger gave way to shock, which became curiosity, and then—

He could sense her too. Of course he could. Rey instinctively severed the connection.

Someone was touching her arm, shaking her gently. She opened her eyes and saw it was Finn.

"Rey, are you all right? You look like you're going to pass out. Do you need to go to the med center?"

She shook her head. "No, I'm fine, I just—I need to talk to Leia."

Finn seemed on the verge of questioning her further when Rose bounded over to them, grinning. Sometime in the last few minutes General Ematt had wrapped up his statement, and people were beginning to filter out of the room.

"Koo just told me the pilots are throwing a little celebration in the hangar," said Rose. "They've got a special batch of jet juice brewed up for exactly this kind of—" She paused, taking note of the expression on Rey's face and frowning. "What's wrong, Rey?"

"Nothing, nothing." Rey hoped she sounded convincing, but she was fairly certain the lack of color in her cheeks and the wobble in her voice betrayed her. "Go to the party. I'll see you both back in the cabin."

Finn gave her one last worried look and then followed Rose out the door. Rey didn't hesitate before rushing over to Leia and helping her to her feet.

"Is there somewhere we can talk privately?" Rey glanced around the room at Poe, Ematt, and the small circle of Resistance members who stayed to speak with them.

Leia gave her a swift nod and led her into the mercifully empty kitchens.

"He's not dead," said Rey the second the heavy doors swung shut behind them.

Leaning back against the countertop, Leia let out a long sigh. "That's what I thought, but I couldn't be sure. It's been so long since I sensed him, I wondered if I would still feel it if he..." She trailed off as though she couldn't bring herself to use the word _died_ in relation to her son.

Rey shifted uncomfortably, hoping Leia hadn't heard about the party taking place in the hangar.

The General appeared lost in thought for a moment, but she quickly focused her attention back on Rey. "I take it the bond between you two is still intact?"

"Seems like it." The knowledge that her strange connection to Kylo Ren had persisted years after Snoke's death was alarming, to say the least. All this time she tried not to dwell on it, tried to tell herself that it would die along with the man who created it. Evidently she had been wrong.

"I'm sorry, Rey. This isn't a burden you should have to bear."

Rey didn't know how to respond to that. On Ach-To, her connection to Kylo Ren had felt like curse, like a cruel joke the Force was playing on her. Now it was hard to be sure.

"Should we tell the others?" she asked.

Leia nodded. "We'll have to. They need to figure out how our agents got faulty intel."

"What will we say to them?" Rey tried to picture herself standing in front of Poe and Ematt and the rest of them and explaining that no, Kylo Ren was _not_ dead, and she knew this because she shared a mystical psychic connection with him. She imagined they would either laugh in her face or throw her out of the Resistance entirely. Perhaps they would do both.

"I'll handle that. I'll call a meeting of the ranking officers in the morning. In the meantime," Leia gave Rey a pointed look, "you look like you could use some rest."

Rey felt abuzz with nervous energy, like she might never rest again. But she offered Leia a weak smile. "I could say the same for you, General."

Leia rolled her eyes and made a shooing motion. "Goodnight."

Rey was almost to the door when Leia called out to her. "Oh, and Rey?"

She turned. Leia was not looking at her; instead she stared intently at the walking stick clutched between her hands.

"Is he safe?" Leia asked quietly. "Ben?"

Rey didn't know how to answer that, so she only nodded. As the kitchen doors closed behind her, she prayed it wasn't a lie.

 

***

 

Back in the cabin, Leia's words kept echoing in her mind: _is he safe?_

Rey collapsed onto her bunk. She was alone; Finn and Rose hadn't returned from the hangar. The night was quiet apart from the hum of insects and the murmur of thunder in the distance.

The truth was that she didn't know whether Kylo Ren was safe or not. He hadn't seemed like he was in any immediate danger when she connected with him—she didn't sense any panic on his end—but he also wasn't someone who frightened easily. Rey knew he was capable of staring down mortal peril without a trace of fear; she had watched him do it before.

She shouldn't care, really. Kylo Ren was a betrayer, a murderer, a man complicit in genocide, and up until very recently, the leader of a brutal regime hellbent on destroying the closest thing she'd ever had to a family. But reminding herself of those things didn't stop her from picturing the way he had looked at her when they touched hands. It didn't stop her from hearing Leia's voice in her mind.

_Is he safe? Ben?_

Would it hurt to make sure? She could at least ease Leia's worries. She might even be able to gather useful information for the Resistance. And Rey was strong enough now that she could cut off the connection the second she needed to. 

She took a deep breath. This was rash, even for her, but the decision was made. For the second time that night, she reached out to Kylo Ren through the Force.

He appeared instantly, almost as though he had been waiting. Rey took an instinctive step back.

In the past few years she had forgotten just how _tall_  he was; he seemed to take up most of the space in the little cabin. He was dressed oddly, in a dingy gray mechanic's jumpsuit stamped with an unfamiliar insignia. His hair hung lank and disheveled around his face, his lips were chapped, and dark circles underlined his eyes. All in all, he gave the impression of someone who hadn't eaten, drank, or slept in days. He certainly didn't look like a man who ever held the title _Supreme Leader._

"Looks like death isn't treating you well," Rey observed, trying to sound cool and collected even as her heart hammered in her chest.

Kylo looked her up and down appraisingly, and despite his shabby appearance, Rey could suddenly picture him lounging in his old master’s throne, watching some unfortunate subject cringe and cower before him. She stood up a little straighter.

"Did you open your mind to me after all this time just so you could insult me?" asked Kylo once his gaze returned to her face.

"No." Rey folded her arms in front of her chest, wishing the scrutiny didn’t unnerve her so much. "I did it because your mother is worried about you."

Kylo’s lip curled. "Since when does she care?"

Now he sounded less like an autocrat and more like a moody teenager. Rey found herself regretting the decision to reach out to him more every second. "I don't know. Probably since she gave birth to you."

Kylo didn't respond to that. Instead, he began to pace around the cabin like a caged beast, and Rey couldn't help but wonder where he was. Was he in a similarly cramped room, or was he out in the open? Was he on a ship or planetside? Was he alone? She wanted to ask those questions and more, but Kylo spoke up before she got the chance.

"My mother must have a spy or two in the Order. She wouldn't know about the _accident_ otherwise."

"Accident?"

"The shuttle explosion that killed me. Or would have killed me," he added with a note of bitter triumph, "if I had been on the shuttle."

Rey frowned. "What exactly happened?"

He gave her a long, searching look, as though considering how much to tell her. "I survived an assassination attempt."

That response gave rise to a hundred other questions. Rey voiced the first one that came to mind. "Who tried to assassinate you?"

"If your spies were any good, you wouldn't be asking me that."

"Hux, then," said Rey, choosing to ignore the jab at the Resistance.

Kylo's jaw clenched, but he didn't reply, continuing to pace the tiny room. Every time he got close to where Rey sat on the bunk, she wondered what would happen if she reached out to touch him. Would he be as warm and solid as he was in Luke's hut? Or had those been special circumstances somehow?

Rey shook her head minutely, willing the thought away. "Hux doesn't know you survived?"

"If he did, there'd be eight or nine star destroyers hovering over this city right now. Hux doesn't believe in half measures."

So he _was_ planetside, in some kind of city. That still meant he could be almost anywhere in the galaxy, but it was good to know all the same. "So now you're on the run." She gestured to the jumpsuit. "In disguise."

His scowl deepened. "Are you enjoying this? Taunting me?"

 _Kind of_ , Rey fought the urge to say, even though it wasn't strictly true. By all accounts, she should be enjoying it: seeing her enemy beaten and humiliated, running away with his tail between his legs. But when she looked at him across the cabin, all she felt was a strange, distant sadness.

Of course, she wasn't going to tell him that. "No," said Rey. "I'm just trying to put together a report for Leia."

Kylo scrutinized her again, taking in her face, her posture. She could tell he didn't believe her, and for good reason; she didn't quite believe herself.

But he didn't accuse her of dishonesty. "Tell my mother that I'm going to find Hux and give him the slowest, most painful death I can imagine," he said, venom dripping from every word. "And then I'm going to take back what's mine."

Rey felt him block off their connection a split-second before he disappeared, and then she was alone in the room once more. She flinched; she hadn't expected him to shut her out so coldly and abruptly. In truth, she hadn't expected him to shut her out at all.

After a few moments, once it became obvious he wasn’t going to reappear, Rey toed off her boots and curled up in the bunk. Her thoughts were a jumble of questions. Should she tell Leia about the encounter? What was she going to say to Finn and Rose when they returned? And above all, where was Kylo Ren, and how did he plan to _take back what was his_?

Rey didn't bother getting under the covers. She knew sleep would not come easily to her tonight.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you may have guessed, this story will make extensive use of characters, locations, and themes from Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. If you haven’t played the game, you should still be able to understand what’s going on. That said, I highly recommend that you play it anyway, if only because it’s _amazing._ :)

 

The streets of Nar Shaddaa were never quiet, not even in the small hours of the morning. Music heavy with bass and percussion blasted from seedy dance halls. A group of drunks stumbled out of a sabacc den, dissolving into raucous laughter. Arms traders hawked their wares openly, touting unregistered blasters and illegal weapons mods. Scantily-clad Twi'lek girls barely past adolescence posed outside the entrance to a brothel, advertising "dances" for seven hundred credits apiece.

As Kylo slipped through the crowded market district, drawing his cloak around him, he remembered what his father used to call this place: _the smuggler's moon_. An ecumenopolis orbiting the Hutt homeworld, Nar Shaddaa served as the unofficial hub for the galaxy's shadow economy.

It was also an excellent place to disappear. When Kylo had made an unscheduled landing at the municipal docks earlier that evening, the attendant on duty was so spice-addled that he only needed to lace his words with a hint of the Force as he informed her that his arrival was, in fact, long-expected, and she had merely forgotten to add his ship to the roster. Unfortunately the dock manager, a sharp-eyed Toydarian, was not so easily fooled; Kylo had to ply him with credits instead.

"Sienar-Jaemus, eh?" the manager had said, glancing down at the logo embroidered on Kylo’s stolen jumpsuit. "Didn't know they ever let you boys leave the shipyards. What brings you to our city? Sabacc? Girls?" He gave Kylo a conspiratorial grin. "I can show you where to find both.”

"I need a place to stay," Kylo told him, which was how he ended up in a dilapidated flophouse by the docks. His room was high-ceilinged but small, not allowing for as much freedom of movement as he would have liked. It was there, lying in a narrow bed under the flickering light of a solitary bulb, that he finally began to take stock of his predicament.

 

*** 

 

Kylo learned of the assassination attempt just a few minutes before it was scheduled to occur. He had been in his private hangar, about to board his shuttle for a routine diplomatic mission—some tedious state dinner his advisors insisted he attend—when he sensed a loud peal of fear from behind him, slicing through his thoughts like an alarm. He turned and found the hangar deserted apart from a slight man in a technician's uniform. The second Kylo made eye contact with the man, the fear spiked into full-blown panic; the alarm became a siren.

He was used to provoking fear in the people around him. A certain amount was desirable, even. But the terror in this man's eyes went beyond the cringing nervousness that Kylo usually saw. Something was about to go—or had already gone—very, very wrong.

The man must have registered Kylo’s suspicion, because he took off sprinting towards the hangar's exit. Binding him with tendrils of the Force, Kylo stopped him, froze him in place. He stalked over to where the man stood, rooted to the spot. Then Kylo ripped off his gloves, placed a hand on the technician’s trembling forehead, and gracelessly pried open his mind. The man shuddered and sobbed, putting up a feeble show of resistance before crumbling and giving Kylo exactly what he was looking for.

There was an explosive device wired into his shuttle's sub-light engines, set to go off once it was out of range of the command ship. None of the shuttle's crew knew about it; they wouldn't have agreed to a suicide mission, and besides, General Hux thought some of them might still be loyal to Kylo Ren.

General Hux. Naturally.

Desperate anger bubbled up in Kylo. He wanted to yell, to throw something, to ignite his lightsaber and drive it through this traitor's heart. More than anything, he wanted to find Hux and put him down like the cur he was.

But there would be time for that later. Kylo fed as much of his anger as he could back into the Force, delving deeper into the technician's mind, where he discovered that, while Hux had orchestrated the plot to assassinate him, he was not the only conspirator; at least half the other generals and a large subset of Kylo's personal advisors were involved. They considered him reckless and unstable, an overgrown child ruled by his emotions: hardly fit to lead a single battalion, much less the entire First Order

And they suspected he killed Snoke. Hux had managed to salvage a holorecording from the elevator on the Supremacy, one that showed Kylo speaking to Rey in close quarters.

He closed his eyes, recalling what Rey said to him that day almost two years ago.

_You'll turn. I'll help you._

The words were so clear in his mind, it felt as though she could be there, standing right next to him. Suddenly lightheaded, Kylo let the technician collapse, babbling and begging, to the floor.

If the generals had reason to believe he killed his old master—working alongside a member of the Resistance, no less—then they had cause to arrest him and bring him before a military tribunal, where he would be charged with high treason and summarily executed. Hells, they might not even bother with the tribunal. The Order's commitment to due process was circumstantial at best.

So why the secret plot? Why not lace his midday meal with poison, or shoot him at point-blank range the second he stepped onto the bridge?

The answer came to him at once. _Optics._ Infighting made the Order appear weak, and Hux and the other generals didn't want to give the public the impression that their organization was crumbling from within. Having their leader die in a freak shuttle explosion would reflect poorly on the Order's mechanics, perhaps, but it wouldn't call the entirety of their command structure into question.

"Please, please..." the technician was muttering, trying to pick himself up off the floor with shaking limbs. With a distracted wave of his hand, Kylo slammed him back down.

He needed to make a decision, and he needed to make it quickly. If the majority of the Order's leadership wanted him dead, it would be suicidal to stay with the fleet; he was strong, stronger than he ever had been, but he couldn't fight them all off by himself. Even if his Knights were here—and chose to remain loyal to him—they couldn’t hope to hold their own against the full military might of the First Order.

There was only one option that would allow him to stay alive. Kylo needed to run. And if he didn't want the Order pursuing him, he had to convince them that their assassination plot had succeeded.

He turned to the technician, who let out a pathetic little whimper.

"Please," the man entreated, "Supreme Leader, I won't tell them what happened. I'll say you decided—"

Kylo stilled his tongue, turning his speech into frightened gurgling. He knelt down and pressed his hand to the man's forehead once more, frowning in concentration.

The technician fell silent, his eyes rolling back in his head as he slipped into unconsciousness. Good. That made things easier.

Kylo quickly located the man's memories of the last few minutes and ripped them away. In their place, he visualized himself stepping aboard the shuttle. He wasn't as accomplished at implanting thoughts and memories as Snoke had been, but the technician was weak-minded enough that Kylo doubted he could distinguish a false memory from a real one.

Satisfied with his work, he unpinned the comm unit from the technician's uniform.

"There's been a change of plans," he told his shuttle pilot over the comm. "I'll need to rendezvous with you later. Wait for me at the spaceport."

"Yes, Supreme Leader," said the pilot, and Kylo felt a tiny pang of regret that the man would soon be punished for his loyalty.

But he couldn't afford to indulge in the sentiment right now. He turned his attention to the only other ship occupying his private hangar: a small Sienar-Jaemus maintenance vehicle. It was far from the ideal means of escape, but it would have to do.

From the cockpit of the tiny ship, Kylo watched the hangar bay doors open, watched his shuttle fly off into the darkness of space. Once he got the hang of the maintenance ship's controls, he followed at a discreet distance.

Even knowing what was going to happen, the sight of it still caught him at unawares: his shuttle broken apart, silently consumed by an orange-red fireball as the lives within were snuffed out. It was only then that the full weight of the situation settled on Kylo's shoulders.

He was alone, exiled, a dead man fleeing the most powerful military force in the galaxy. He might spend the rest of his life in hiding or on the run.

Kylo knew the thought should fill him with despair, but in that moment, watching the debris from the explosion drift slowly in the vacuum of space, all he felt was a depthless, all-consuming rage.

The hiding was temporary. The running was temporary. He was going to take back every iota of power he had lost today, or he would die in the attempt.

 

***

 

Of course, resolving to seize power was always easier than actually figuring out how to do it. And if there had been a nascent plan forming in Kylo's subconscious, it dissolved the instant he felt Rey's mind brush up against his own.

It happened so fast that he only caught a glimpse of her emotions: concern, relief, and once she realized that he could sense her too, a spike of adrenaline. Then she closed the bond as quickly as she had opened it.

 _Concern. Relief._ Rey must have heard about the assassination somehow, and when she discovered it was unsuccessful, she was _relieved_.

Why would she be relieved to discover that someone she considered her enemy was alive? She had closed her mind to him years ago. Once she chose her path, she wanted nothing to do with him. Why did she now care whether he lived or died?

When Rey appeared before him later that evening, as he somehow knew she would, she claimed she was only checking up on him for his mother's sake. Those words would have stung if Kylo hadn't known they were a lie.

He drank in the sight of her. Her hair was longer than he remembered, and it curled slightly at the ends. That and thin sheen of sweat at her temples had him guessing she was somewhere warm and humid. She wore gray-green military fatigues, patched and stained with what might be oil.

Apart from her hair and clothes, she looked exactly as she had that day on Crait. There was even the same pity in her eyes.

Kylo couldn't bear that look. He didn't want her to see him like this: weary, broken, defeated. So he blocked off their connection, and then he was alone in the little room in the flophouse once more.

Now, making his way through Nar Shaddaa's bustling markets, Kylo regretted shutting her out so abruptly. He should have asked her something—about what he didn't know. Anything to keep her there and keep her talking.

As much as he was loathe to acknowledge it, Rey had been a constant fixture in his mind over the years. In the beginning, Kylo told himself that this was temporary, that the responsibility of leading the Order would be enough to distract him. Instead, it seemed to make matters worse. During long tactical meetings and pointless state dinners, Kylo couldn't help but imagine what it would be like to have her there at his side. He doubted she had much experience with either military strategy or diplomacy, but she could have been a valuable confidante: a rare, true ally in the viper's nest that was the First Order.

Although if Kylo were honest with himself, what he wanted from Rey extended well beyond that. Alone in his bed, late at night before sleep took him, or early in the morning just after he woke, his thoughts of her inexorably turned to the obscene.

He refused to indulge in these thoughts. He would lie there, hands rigid at his sides, mentally cycling through something mundane like lightsaber forms or the components in his Tie Silencer's engine until the impulse faded. If that didn't work, he would touch himself with mechanical efficiency, keeping his mind as empty as possible.

He once overheard another student of Skywalker's refer to masturbation as _getting the poison out._ When it came to Rey, Kylo didn't think he could ever get the poison out, not entirely. His body and mind were thoroughly infected.

"Hey, you," someone called from off to his left, cutting through his thoughts.

Kylo turned. A shape emerged from the shadows of a nearby alley: a woman, young and humanoid, with dark hair. Absurdly, his heart begin to race.

But when the woman stepped into the light, he saw that her face was all wrong: too pale and too angular.

"You're much too handsome to look so lonely," the woman cooed. She was obviously in some sort of altered state; her gaze was unfocused, and she swayed where she stood. "Let me keep you company. I'll knock half off my hourly rate."

"No," said Kylo sharply, pulling his hood down over his eyes and quickening his step. Very few people outside of the First Order and its sympathizers had seen his face and lived, but there were spies and busybodies in every corner of the galaxy. It was best for him to keep a low profile.

And besides, he thought wryly, he used to have plenty of women offering him the same services free of charge. Hux had tried to foist a different courtesan on Kylo nearly every week, perhaps thinking it would throw him off balance, make him relinquish some of his control.

Kylo had found these women uniformly boring. They thought they could trade their youth and beauty for power, but all those things would grant them was a crude, temporary imitation of it. His mother would have scoffed at them and pitied them in equal measure.

He grit his teeth. These thoughts of his mother, of Rey—they didn't serve him. They wouldn't help him in his coming period of exile.

As a distraction, he took mental stock of his recent purchases. Several month's worth of rations, in case he had to spend time away from civilization. An advanced medkit. New clothes. A comm unit with a holonet transceiver, extensive encryption settings, and off-world capabilities. And finally, a sturdy, late-model security droid.

The droid was at least a head taller than Kylo, and there was a malevolent slant to its optical sensors that gave the impression of a glare.

"This one's the HK-4000," the shopkeeper had told him, patting the droid's durasteel flank. "Now to be perfectly honest, we've had some complaints about the personality algorithms in these models. But I promise you won't find a more capable and, er, _enthusiastic_ protector this side of the Outer Rim."

Kylo, who cared less about the droid's personality than he did about not being murdered in his sleep, had it delivered to his room in the flophouse. That was where he was headed now, a satchel filled with the rest of his purchases thrown over his shoulder.

As he left the market district and proceeded toward the docks, a low thrum of unease began to build in the back of his mind. It continued to increase in volume through the dim, narrow hallways of the flophouse. When Kylo reached the door to his room, he was not surprised to hear voices coming from within. The intruders weren't speaking Basic, but Kylo had a gift for languages, and it wasn't difficult to follow the thread of their conversation.

"I'm tired of waiting. Let's take the droid and tell the boss he didn't come back. He's probably spending the night in some whorehouse, anyway."

"You know we can't walk off another job, Zev. We're lucky the boss gave us a second chance at all."

They started bickering. Kylo, his anger mounting, didn't wait to hear the rest of the argument. He drew back and kicked down the door.

The two figures—a Rodian and a Duros—leapt to their feet at once, their hands flying to their blasters. The Duros even managed to fire, but Kylo froze the bolt and left it sizzling in mid-air.

"What—" the Rodian started. He was cut off when Kylo, in one swift motion, pulled the lightsaber from under his cloak, ignited it, and slashed open the creature's throat. The Rodian's body crumpled to the floor, and the foul smell of charred flesh filled the little room.

The Duros tried to fire at Kylo again, but this time Kylo stopped the bolt with his saber. Ripping the blaster from the Duros's hand, Kylo advanced on the creature. He brought the crackling red blade inches from the Duros's neck.

"Who sent you?" Kylo snarled.

"S-Sio Sowebec," cried the Duros. He cowered away from the saber, his wide, insectoid eyes bulging. "Please don't—"

Kylo didn't let him finish his plea. "Who is that?"

"He runs the docks. I-I don't work for him! I just owed him a favor!"

The Toydarian. He should have known. "Why did he send you here?" Kylo demanded. "To rob me? Kill me?"

"Just to—just to rob you. He thought you were a rich kid playing dress-up. Thought you'd be an easy mark."

Kylo wasn't sure whether he believed that, but the Duros didn't appear to be lying. Either way, he was a liability now. With a flick of his wrist, Kylo sliced off the creature's head. It fell to the floor with a sickening _thunk_.

He surveyed the room's carnage for a few moments before he noticed the security droid glinting uselessly in the corner.

"Couldn't you have done something about this?" he asked the droid irritably.

The droid's optical sensors lit up, and Kylo took a step back. He hadn't expected a response.

"Answer: forgive me master, but you seemed to have the situation very much under control," said the droid, a hint of sarcasm in its metallic voice.

Kylo suddenly understood what the shopkeeper meant about the droid's personality algorithm. "I meant _before_ I got here."

The droid drew back as though offended. "Indignant rejoinder: master, I had no idea these organics intended to harm you! Had I been aware of that, I would have killed them much more slowly and messily than you did." The droid glanced down at the Duros's severed head. "Incidentally, it is a shame that your weapon cauterizes wounds."

Kylo inwardly cursed himself for letting the shopkeeper trick him into buying a droid that was somehow both incompetent and deeply sadistic. He opened his mouth to say so, but thought better of it. He really didn't have time to argue with an algorithm.

"Power off," he ordered instead.

The light behind the droid's optical sensors went out, and it froze in place.

Kylo turned his attention back to the bodies on the floor. He crouched and began to rifle through the pockets of the slain Rodian, looking for ID or some other indication of where he came from, who he was working for. He realized it was entirely possible that the Duros had been telling the truth, that they were only after him for his credits. But a seed of paranoia had lodged itself in his mind, and now it was beginning to take root.

The First Order had eyes and ears in every corner of the galaxy. What if Hux suspected that the assassination attempt had failed? Even worse, what if the Order's agents had been tailing him all along, biding their time until Kylo let his guard down? After all, Nar Shaddaa was an excellent place to make a body disappear.

The Rodian had nothing of interest on him: just an expired swoop bike registration and a few Sabacc tokens. The only thing he found in the Duros's pockets was a tiny thermal detonator, which he gingerly removed and placed in his satchel, grateful that the Duros hadn't thought to reach for it during their confrontation.

Kylo got back to his feet and ran a hand through his hair, his mind racing. Whether or not the intruders had been working for the Order, it was clear he would not be safe on Nar Shaddaa. The smuggler's moon was too crowded, too lawless. Kylo had thought he could use those characteristics to his advantage; only now did it occur to him that the Order could do the same.

Reaching for his satchel, he began to pack up the rest of his meager possessions. His next destination would be remote, he decided. Somewhere isolated, far removed from the rest of the galaxy, where the Order's spies and sycophants would never find him.

Where no one would find him. Not until he was ready.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, kudos, and bookmarks are always appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much for all the lovely feedback so far!

 

Rey sat alone at a table in the mostly-empty mess hall, stirring her rehydrated breakfast with a fork. It was mid-morning, and everyone on the base seemed to have eaten already apart from Finn and Rose. The two of them had staggered back into the cabin late last night, giggling and smelling strongly of alcohol. Rey, who had been lying awake in her bunk for hours, unable to quiet her churning thoughts, rolled over and pretended to be asleep, pretended she couldn't hear the fumbling and muffled laughter coming from the bunk opposite her.

When she got up the next morning, she found them twined together in Finn's bunk, dead to the world. She knew they would probably have to contend with nasty hangovers when they woke, but they looked so peaceful lying there that for a second, Rey felt a twinge of jealousy.

They didn't know what she knew. She carried a burden they did not.

Rey frowned down at her breakfast, trying to push those thoughts from her mind. Everyone on the base would know what she knew soon enough. In fact, Rey was surprised she wasn't hearing whispers about it already. She kept half-expecting General Emmatt to stride into the mess hall, deserted though it was, and announce that Kylo Ren was still alive.

An ancient cleaning droid whizzed past her, squawking at a spot of grease on the floor, and Rey wondered if she should go to Leia and confess that she had spoken to her son last night. All of the intel she gleaned from the conversation were things Leia already knew or could have easily guessed, but the idea of keeping them from her still felt dishonest.

Rey was just getting up to find Leia when Finn and Rose burst through the mess hall doors, making a beeline for her.

"Rey, you're not gonna believe—" Finn began.

Rose cut him off. "General Organa's leaving."

Rey dropped the tray she had been holding, letting it clatter back down to the table. "What? What do you mean _leaving_?"

"She's leaving the base, maybe for good," said Rose. "Kaydel told us. We saw her crying by the equipment shed on the way down here."

Rey felt as though she had been smacked upside the head with something large and heavy. "It could just be a rumor," she heard herself say.

Finn shook his head, looking solemn. "Kaydel says Leia told her. She wouldn't make something like that up."

Rey stared at him. Leia was more devoted to the Resistance than anyone Rey knew. Fighting the Empire and the First Order—fighting for democracy—had been her life's work. She wouldn't abandon it lightly.

A horrible thought occurred to her: what if Leia wasn't leaving of her own volition? What if she had been forced out?

"Did she say why?" Rey asked quickly. "Leia, I mean?"

It was Rose's turn to shake her head. "No. Kaydel thinks it might have something to do with her health, though. Says she never really recovered from the incident on the Raddus."

Rey frowned. While it was true that Leia had trouble walking, often relying on a cane and wincing with discomfort if she spent too long on her feet, her mind was as sharp as it had ever been. And the Resistance's medics were, by Leia's own estimate, some of the most skilled in the galaxy.

There was only one thing to do. "I have to go find her," said Rey, pushing past Finn and Rose and taking off at a run.

"Rey, wait!" she heard Finn shout before the cafeteria doors swung shut behind her. But Rey didn't stop, attracting curious glances from passers by as she sprinted towards Leia's living quarters.

Leia's cabin was larger and more centrally located than the one Rey shared with Finn and Rose. When she arrived at the front door, pausing for a moment to catch her breath, she heard movement within: rustling, footsteps, and the clunk of a walking stick on the floor. Before she could raise her hand to knock, the door swung open. Leia stood in the threshold.

"I was wondering when I'd see you, Rey," said Leia. She smiled, but her voice was heavy with weariness. "Please, come in."

Rey followed Leia inside, her heart sinking when she saw the half-packed luggage sitting on the bed. "So it's true, then? You're leaving the base?"

Leia nodded, settling down onto a rickety chair and gesturing for Rey to do the same. "The officers and I decided it would be for the best."

Rey didn't sit. "Why?" she demanded, struggling not to raise her voice.

"The official reason is that I'm old and in poor health," Leia said with a dry chuckle. "Both of those things are true, but I won't insult you by pretending that's the whole story."

She beckoned for Rey to come closer, and this time Rey complied. Leia took Rey's hands in her own, the warmth and softness of her palms contrasting with the cold, steely silver of the rings she wore. "This morning, I told the other officers that Ben was still alive. When they asked me how I knew, I said we shared a connection through the Force. I told them we could communicate with one another from across the galaxy."

Shocked, Rey wrenched her hands away. "You lied to them."

"I won't deny it."

"But why?"

"Isn't it obvious? To protect you."

A sudden wave of dizziness struck Rey, and she sank down into a nearby chair. Leia had lied, had sacrificed her position in the Resistance, to protect _her?_

"The rest of the leadership is terrified of my son, and for good reason," Leia continued. "Of course they didn't accuse me of anything, but they're worried—understandably, I think—that he could exploit the connection and get a hold of compromising information."

Rey suppressed a shiver. This was a concern of hers too. Her mental defenses had grown much stronger since the last time Kylo Ren attempted to invade her mind, but it would be naive to assume that he hadn't also spent the years since Starkiller honing his powers.

Either way, that burden was hers to bear, not Leia's. She wanted to say so, but Leia spoke up again.

"I don't believe that Snoke created the bond between you and Ben. I may not be a mystic like my brother," she said with a wistful half-smile, "but I know the work of the Force when I see it. The Force brought you two together for a reason, and I doubt that reason involved destroying the Resistance from within."

"Then why didn't you tell the other officers that?" Rey burst out, unable to keep quiet any longer. "And why didn't you tell them it's me who's connected to Kylo Ren, not you?"

Leia remained calm in the face of Rey's indignation. "They wouldn't believe me, Rey. I imagine they'd think my son was manipulating me somehow." She shook her head ruefully. "They don't know the Force like we do, and I don't think they would let me try to teach them now. As for your second question, I already told you: I did it to protect you."

"I don't need protect—" Rey began.

"I know you don't. No one in the Resistance would do anything to harm you. But I can't let them shut you out. Not when you're our best hope of restoring the Jedi order."

Rey wanted to yell in frustration, but she forced herself to keep her voice level. "I'm not a Jedi, and even if I were, you're a _general_. You led the Rebel Alliance. You were a princess and senator, and I'm just—"

 _I'm just a scavenger_ , Rey thought, although she didn't say it aloud. _I'm no one_.

Leia's eyebrows drew together, and she surveyed Rey with a sympathetic frown. "You don't need formal training to be a Jedi. You don't even need a lightsaber. You only need to dedicate yourself to the Force, and to the Light."

Rey thought of the broken kyber crystal lying in the rucksack beneath her bunk. Then she remembered what Luke had said to her on Ahch-To: the very first lesson he taught her.

_To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies, is vanity. Can you feel that?_

Leia was still speaking, drawing Rey out of the memory. "Don't waste your energy worrying about me, Rey. I'll still be close by. We agreed that I'll go to Onderon. Their queen is a Resistance sympathizer and an old family friend. I'll be well hidden and well cared for there."

Rey rose from the chair, shaking her head, her decision made. "No. No, I'm not going to let you do this."

She would not deprive the Resistance of its best and wisest leader just to keep her connection with Kylo Ren a secret. She should have told the other officers about the bond years ago, but now that the damage was done, she was not going to allow Leia to be punished for her own lie of omission.

"Rey—" Leia began, a hard note of warning in her voice.

But Rey was already out the door, running as fast as she could. It was drizzling now, and the dirt paths criss-crossing the base were turning muddy. More than once she slid and narrowly avoided falling backward into the muck.

People were staring at her again. She was so set on reaching her destination that she nearly ran headlong into C-3PO, who looked to be on his way back to Leia's cabin.

"Mistress Rey!" he called after her indignantly.

She ignored him. The drizzle became a full-fledged downpour, but Rey didn't slow her pace. The Resistance leadership held their meetings in a small building on the eastern side of the camp: an old, rusty metal box elevated above the swampy ground on stilts. Rey clanged her way up the entrance ramp, grabbing the handrail to avoid slipping. By the time she flung herself through the mercifully unlocked front door, she was soaked to the skin.

Poe, Ematt, and Commander D'Acy were huddled at one end of a long table, speaking in low voices. They fell silent as soon as they caught sight of her.

"Rey, what are you doing here?" demanded Poe. "This is a closed-door meeting, you can't just—"

"You can't send Leia away," Rey interrupted, struggling to get the words out as she caught her breath. "It's me who's connected to Kylo Ren, not her. She was just trying to protect me."

For a few seconds, Poe, Ematt, and D'Acy just stared at her, evidently shocked into silence.

"Beg pardon?" said D'Acy finally.

In a rush, Rey told them everything she should have told them years ago. She told them about her conversations with Kylo on Ahch-To, when he would appear before her seemingly at random. She told them what happened when she reached out across their bond and touched his hand, how she had seen the two of them fighting side-by-side against a common enemy. With a pang of shame, she told them how she had gone to Kylo on the Supremacy, putting herself at his mercy in the hopes that her vision would come true. Then she told them what happened in Snoke's throne room.

"My goodness," D'Acy exclaimed softly, once Rey arrived at the part of the story where Kylo asked her join him.

Rey looked up to find Poe staring at her, his mouth hanging open. D'Acy was similarly wide-eyed, with one hand clutched to her chest. Ematt's gaze, by contrast, remained steady and impassive.

Slightly unnerved, Rey continued, "I saw him on Crait, too, after the battle. But I shut him out. I didn't see him or speak to him again until last night." She turned to Ematt. "I couldn't believe it when you told us he was dead. So I re-opened the bond to make sure."

None of them spoke. "He isn't," Rey added lamely, breaking the silence. "Dead, I mean. Leia was telling the truth about that."

"You spoke to Kylo Ren last night?" asked Ematt, and Rey was surprised to hear that his voice was calm and level. She had expected him to sound angry, or at the very least disappointed.

Rey nodded.

"What did he tell you?"

"Not very much. He faked his death, made it look like the assassination attempt succeeded. He's on the run now, planetside in some city. He says he's going to kill Hux and take back control of the First Order."

At this, Poe let out a short, sharp laugh. "I'd love to see him try."

Still fixing Rey with his unfaltering, pale-eyed stare, Ematt asked her, "Why didn't you tell us about your connection to Ren earlier?"

The words swam into Rey's mind unbidden.

_Because I didn't want you to think I was weak. Because I didn't want you to consider me a liability. Because I didn't want you to know that I was naive enough to put my trust in the man who murdered my mentor and mutilated my best friend._

Rey did her best to ignore these thoughts. "I told General Organa," she said, trying not to sound defensive.

As though the sound of her name had summoned her, the door clanged open to reveal Leia standing in the threshold. Even sopping wet and leaning heavily against her walking stick, she was a commanding presence, and every eye in the room snapped to her at once.

A second later, C-3PO appeared beside her carrying a large umbrella. "Princess—excuse me, _general_ _—_ I can't have you rushing around in the rain in your condition," he fretted.

"Shut it, 3PO." Leia stepped inside and wiped her boots on the mat—something that, Rey realized with a twinge of guilt, she herself had forgotten to do; a trail of muddy boot prints led from the threshold to where she stood now.

Rey glanced up from the boot prints to Leia. The instant she made eye contact, a spark of recognition passed between them; Leia knew that Rey had already told the other officers everything. Not for the first time, Rey wondered whether Leia shared her son's talent for reading minds.

Leia didn't seem angry. Instead, she looked exhausted, and that was somehow much worse. Rey found herself half-wishing that Leia or one of the others would shout at her, would give voice to the accusations still swirling around in her mind.

_Idiot. Coward. Liar. Traitor._

"Please go, Rey," said Leia, sounding every bit as tired as she looked. "I need to speak to the other officers in private."

Rey nodded and left without a word, catching one last glimpse of Poe, D'Acy, and Ematt's staring faces before the door closed behind her.

Outside, the rain had stopped, but heavy gray clouds still roiled overhead. She began to follow one of the trails that led away from the camp into the thick of the jungle beyond. She had no real destination in mind; she just knew she wanted to be alone. The idea of running into Finn or Rose or any of the others and having to explain what had happened was unbearable.

She walked until she came to small clearing alongside a stream. There she collapsed onto a fallen tree lying opposite the bank, immediately getting the seat of her trousers wet. It was uncomfortable, but not enough to distract from the painful reality of her situation.

Rey knew she was going to be punished. Worst of all, she knew she would deserve it. She only wished she had told the truth about her connection to Kylo Ren before Leia was forced to lie on her behalf.

What would happen to them now? Would Leia still face the same punishment? Would they both be sent away to the palace on Onderon? Rey supposed there were worse places to spend a period of exile, but a luxurious cage was still a cage. She couldn't stand the thought of attending feasts and balls and doing whatever else it was royalty did all day while everyone else in the Resistance was stuck here in the mud, sacrificing their safety and comfort to bring the First Order down.

She closed her eyes, trying her best not to imagine the look on Finn's face when she had to tell him they were kicking her off the base.

 _You don't know that's what they'll do_ , Rey reminded herself. _They might decide to let you stay._

But the cynic in her—the _realist_ in her—pointed out that if the leadership was prepared to turn away an accomplished general like Leia, they certainly wouldn't hesitate to do the same with Rey. Hells, they were probably discussing the terms of her exile right now.

With that thought, the misery that had been lying in wait all morning rolled over her like a fog. She buried her face in her hands, too numb to cry.

Rey didn't know how long she stayed like that. By the time she opened her eyes and looked up, it was drizzling again. The veil of misty rain gave the surrounding jungle a blurred, dreamlike appearance.

Then she noticed a large, dark shape at the edge of her vision. Shocked but unflinching, she turned and found Kylo Ren sitting a few feet away, watching her. He looked as though he had showered, shaved, and changed clothes since the last time she saw him, but the dark circles under his eyes had only grown more pronounced.

"How long have you been sitting there?" she asked. She supposed she should be furious with herself for letting her guard down, letting him into her head again, but she found her capacity for self-loathing exhausted.

"Not long."

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Rey watched the rain and and Kylo watched her.

Finally, Rey broke the silence. "Did you mean to come here? Or," she added, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice, "has the Force decided to start connecting us again, just to torment me?"

"I meant to come," Kylo said quietly. "I wanted to see you."

The admission cut through the haze of her misery like a sharp, bright knife. Rey stared at him.

Wordlessly, Kylo held out a hand to her, just as he had on the Supremacy. His hand trembled slightly, and she noticed he wasn't wearing gloves.

Rey imagined her friends and mentors in the Resistance—Leia, Chewie, Poe, Finn, Rose—all screaming at her not to do it, not to take whatever Kylo Ren was offering. Luke's voice echoed in her mind.

_This is not going to go the way you think._

He had been right then. He was probably right again now. But Luke was dead, and the Resistance didn't want her, and she was standing on the precipice of a loneliness she hadn't felt since her days on Jakku.

Damn the consequences. Rey reached out and grasped Kylo Ren's hand.

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

From a distance, Telos IV looked like most other habitable planets: blue oceans and green continents marbled with swirling white clouds.

 _What's so special about this place?_  Kylo remembered asking his father when he first laid eyes on it, well over twenty years ago. He had been sitting in the co-pilot's seat on the Falcon, fidgeting with impatience, still small enough that his boot-tips barely skimmed the floor.

 _Site of an ancient battle or something,_ his father said dismissively, and then grinned. _But more importantly, it's got one of the best smuggler's hideouts this side of the Outer Rim. Don't tell your mom._

Those four words used to send such a thrill through him.

_Find a way to lose your tutor, kid. We're going to a swoop race this afternoon. Don't tell your mom._

_Come on, it's high time you learned to play Sabacc. Only don't tell your mom._

_All right, I'll let you drive once we're clear of the planet's gravity well. Just this once, though. And don't tell your mom._

In his stolen Sienar-Jaemus shuttle, Kylo tightened his grip on the control yoke. Ever since Starkiller, memories of his father came with the phantom sensation of a warm, weathered hand cupping his cheek.

He shivered, and with some difficulty, refocused his attention on the descent to Telos. It was simple enough to blend in with the air traffic streaming towards the capital city, but Kylo had a different destination in mind. Flipping several switches, he activated the shuttle's cloaking system and turned sharply, heading for the planet's white-capped south pole. There, buried underneath meters of snow, ice, and rock, lay the hideout his father had shown him all those years ago.

The landing was hard. Vicious gusts of wind rocked the little ship, and snow obscured so much of the viewport that Kylo almost found himself flying blind. When he finally managed to bring the shuttle to rest on an ancient landing pad, he slumped back in his seat with relief. He hadn't survived an assassination attempt just to die in a crash on some Outer Rim backwater.

There had been similar weather when his father brought him here, he remembered, and yet Kylo didn't recall Han having any trouble with the landing. No, his father had talked and joked with Chewie the whole time, bringing the Falcon down surely and steadily while the stormed raged outside.

_He made it look so easy. He was a better pilot than you'll ever be._

The thought made Kylo itch for feel of a lightsaber in his hand, for the smoke and scent of melting durasteel. But he mastered the impulse. He retrieved the saber from his rucksack and clipped it to his belt instead.

Outside the ship, it quickly became clear that the cold-weather gear he bought on Nar Shaddaa would not stand up to a polar snowstorm. The icy wind cut through his coat, boots, and gloves like they were made of mesh instead of synthetic Gorgodon hide. Luckily, Kylo spotted the entrance to the hideout right away: a rocky hummock about his own height rising from the snow.

He was shivering violently by the time he reached it, his body already weak from the strain of maintaining its internal temperature. Channeling what little energy he had left into the Force, he blasted the accumulated snow and ice away from the entrance, revealing a reinforced metal door. As he suspected, the adjacent keypad was frozen solid: inoperable. His father must have jimmied the thing open somehow, but Kylo didn't have time for that; he was beginning to lose sensation in his hands and feet. Instead, he wrapped numb fingers around the hilt of his lightsaber and slashed a wide arc through the door. He leapt out of the way as the hunk of metal fell, landing in the snow with a soft _thump._

There was darkness beyond, and relative warmth. The next door he came to juddered open before him automatically. For a moment, Kylo was impressed that the motion sensors were operational after all these years. Then, with an unpleasant jolt, he realized that someone may very well still be maintaining them.

Did smugglers still use the polar facility as a base? Somehow the idea had not occurred to him until now, and Kylo cursed his lack of forethought. True, the First Order had cracked down hard on smuggling outside of places like Nar Shaddaa, where the Hutt cartels paid them handsomely to turn a blind eye. But that didn't mean there weren't a few opportunistic stragglers left, some of whom might know about the hideout.

Kylo's thoughts turned to the cargo hold in his shuttle, where the malevolent-eyed security droid waited. He allowed himself a grim smile. If there were any smugglers in the facility, they would soon wish they had never come.

 

***

 

"Plaintive query: _must_ I give them quick deaths?"

Kylo stood in the underground hangar opposite the security droid, listening to the steady drip of ice melting off his shuttle. "You can do whatever you want with them after you bring them to me for questioning. Your weapons have stun settings, correct?"

"Reluctant affirmation: yes, master."

"Good. I want you to do a thorough sweep of the facility. Take schematics while you're at it, and let me know if you come across anything unusual."

The droid bowed its head and clanked away down a nearby corridor. Once it was out of sight, Kylo set off in the opposite direction. He held the crackling blade of his lightsaber out in front of him, partly as a precaution and partly to illuminate his path. But he soon realized he wouldn't need it for the latter purpose; overhead lights flickered and flared to life at his approach. More operational motion sensors. More reasons to believe this place wasn't as abandoned as it looked.

As he walked, Kylo tried to piece together a mental map of the facility. He came across a few rooms he remembered: a kitchen stocked with enough dusty packets of dehydrated protein to last him several years, a dormitory sporting six uncomfortable bunk beds. But some of it was new to him; for instance, he had no memory of the large, empty room with what looked like a sparring circle at its center.

At the end of the corridor, Kylo came to set of stairs leading down into darkness. Heat rose from the stairwell, sending a small thrill of recognition through him. _This_ he remembered.

He took the stairs two at a time until he reached the chamber below. Dim, floor-level lighting illuminated a series of steaming pools, and the air smelled faintly of sulfur.

A memory suddenly leapt to the forefront of Kylo's mind: Han, never much of a scientist, trying to explain the concept of geothermal vents to his eight-year-old son.

Something sickening and nameless twisted in his gut. He felt a ghostly hand on his cheek. He heard Snoke's voice in his head, mocking him.

_Look at you. The deed split your spirit the bone._

Kylo grit his teeth, shook his head. Snoke was gone. His father was gone. It was only Kylo's own weakness—his fear, his guilt, his sentimentality—that kept their memories alive. And if he didn't learn to discipline his mind, the weight of those memories might very well crush him.

With that thought, he turned his back on the steaming pools and retreated up the stairs to continue his search.

The security droid greeted him on the landing. "Report: after a thorough investigation, I have concluded that there are no other organics present in this facility."

The droid sounded regretful, but Kylo was relieved. "Pull up the facility's schematics."

Seeming to resent any command that did not involve killing or maiming, the droid tapped sulkily at the holoprojector on its wrist. A glowing, blue-tinted map sprang into the air between them.

Kylo peered at it. Most of what he saw was familiar, but on his second pass, something in the southeast quadrant caught his eye. He pointed to the spot in question. "What's that?"

"Answer: that is the entrance to the irrigation tunnels."

"Irrigation tunnels?"

"Clarification: it appears that this facility once served as the hub of a planet-wide irrigation system. It is likely that these tunnels form a network spanning the entirety of Telos."

Kylo frowned. Either his father hadn't known about the tunnels, or he had declined to share the information with Kylo.

The droid interrupted before he could pursue that line of thought any further. "Addendum: there is something else, master. You told me to inform you of anything that might be described as _unusual."_

"What did you find?" Kylo asked sharply.

"Answer: There was a door I was unable to open, made of stone and covered in crude markings. My sensors indicated a large chamber beyond."

Kylo couldn't recall seeing anything in the facility made of stone, let alone covered in markings. "Take me there," he demanded.

The droid led him through a series of narrow, twisting maintenance corridors, deep into the heart of the facility, until the door in question loomed before them.

Unusual was an apt description. The door was massive, hewn from some dark volcanic rock that made a striking contrast with the durasteel-paneled walls around it. Kylo moved closer and saw that what the droid had described as _crude markings_ were in fact intricately-carved scenes. There were ships of strange and ancient design, planets exploding, cities in flames. The faces of unfamiliar creatures leered at him, but Kylo's eyes were immediately drawn to the humanoid figures depicted on the door. Unlike the creatures, these figures were faceless—hooded, veiled, or masked—and each one held what was unmistakably a lightsaber.

Kylo took a step forward. On impulse, he pulled the glove off of his right hand and reached out, running bare fingertips over the carvings. They seemed to hum faintly beneath his touch.

Something tugged at the edges of his perception: an awareness, a consciousness other than his own, neither as deep as his connection to Rey nor as painful as Snoke's forays into his mind. It felt ephemeral, somehow untethered to Living Force. But the longer he touched the carvings, the more it solidified in his mind.

Kylo wrenched his hand away. Shaken, he turned to the droid. "You said there's a large chamber behind this door. Would you be able to tell if there were any life forms inside?"

The droid narrowed its optical sensors in annoyance. "Answer: my biometric sensors are highly advanced. I assure you, master, that if there were any other organics in this facility, I would have detected them."

But however advanced its sensors were, the droid had been unable to open the door. Refocusing his attention, Kylo reached out with the Force, searching for some hidden means of ingress: a keypad to short-circuit, a locking mechanism to disable, a concealed handle to twist. He found nothing.

For a moment, he considered trying to blast the door open with the Force. But no, the facility was ancient and deep underground. A strong enough blast could trigger a cave-in, and suffocating beneath a pile of rubble would be even more humiliating than burning up in a shuttle crash. He wasn't going to give Hux the satisfaction.

The door could wait until he had eaten and slept, he decided. Meanwhile, there was still more of the facility left to explore.

"Show me the entrance to the irrigation tunnels," he ordered.

 

***

 

Kylo had no trouble falling asleep several hours later. Exhaustion pulled him down into vivid, restive dreams.

He found himself hurrying along the tunnel he had explored earlier with the droid: a wide, circular corridor, pitch black but for the light from his saber. A hooded and cloaked figure moved ahead of him in the darkness, barely visible, always on the verge of slipping out of sight.

Kylo chased after the figure. Whoever it was had something he wanted, something to show him. Something he needed to see.

The figure came to an abrupt stop and pulled an object out from under its cloak: something small and pyramid-shaped, pulsing with a strange violet light. It was recognizable in a way Kylo couldn't quite place, and he struggled to remember what it was or where he had seen it before.

Then the figure's hood fell away, and all thoughts of the object fled his mind. It was Rey.

She was smiling. Distantly, Kylo noted he had never seen her smile before. The violet light danced in her eyes as she surveyed him, her head cocked to one side.

"Rey?" he called out. But as Kylo moved to approach her, she turned on her heel and ran.

He raced after her, but she was fast, faster than he ever could have anticipated. He would have lost sight of her entirely if not for the object she held, which shone in the darkness ahead like a beacon, guiding him onward.

"Rey!" he yelled.

She stopped again, but not because he called out to her. The tunnel had ended, and Rey was standing before a great black door. The violet light threw its carved face into sharp relief.

It was the door Kylo had been unable to open. And now it was opening for Rey, a seam cutting through its center, a crack in the stone widening just enough for her to pass. She turned and gave him one last appraising look before she slipped through and disappeared.

Kylo had every intention of following her. He wanted to know what was behind the door. He wanted to uncover the secrets of the glowing object, at once strange and utterly familiar. More than anything, he wanted Rey. He couldn't bear the thought of watching her leave again.

But before he could take another step, something dragged him back into consciousness.

Kylo's eyes flew open. He sat bolt upright on the stiff little mattress, nearly hitting his head against the bunk above. Something— _someone_ —had been in the room with him, he was sure of it.

He stood up, and his lightsaber leapt into his hands almost of its own accord. Under its crackling red glare, he scanned the dormitory. There was nothing out of the ordinary, no hint of movement.

Then he felt it again: the same awareness he had sensed earlier when he traced the carvings on the door. Only it was much stronger now, so strong that it seemed to call to him.

_Kylo Ren. Ben Solo. Follow me._

Those words should have alarmed him. This presence, whatever it was, knew his names, both current and former. Skywalker would have told him to guard his thoughts against such an entity. Snoke would have mocked him for allowing it into his mind in the first the place.

But both of his masters were dead now, and Kylo didn't have to concern himself with their judgments, real or imagined, any longer.

Instead, he allowed curiosity and a strange compulsion to lead him out of the dormitory and into the facility's twisting maze of passageways. Some distant part of him noted that the overhead lights were no longer switching on as he passed; the motion sensors must have stopped working. But he couldn't bring himself to care about this new development any more than he cared about the icy chill of the floor against the soles of his bare feet. Everything felt far away, secondary to the presence leading him onward. It occurred to him that he might still be dreaming.

Kylo was not surprised when he arrived at the massive stone door. It stood open for him this time, as he had somehow known it would. Beyond was a cavernous, circular room with a ceiling stretching several stories high. Dim red lights along the walls did little to make the chamber any brighter; the main source of illumination came from the floor at the center of the room, where a small, pyramid-shaped object lay emitting a violet glow.

He recognized it at once from the dream.

 _Ben Solo,_ the presence urged him forward. _Kylo Ren._

Abruptly, Kylo realized why the object looked so familiar. He had seen something similar once with his uncle, during an expedition into the ruins of a Sith temple. Luke had warned him not to touch it.

 _It's a Sith holocron, Ben,_ Luke had said. _We don't know what's in there. Best to leave it alone._

Kylo paused in the doorway.

 _The Jedi is dead,_ hissed the presence, sensing his hesitation. The voice now seemed to emanate from the holocron itself, which pulsed even more brightly. _Yet you still allow his teachings to poison your mind. Why?_

Kylo wondered whether the presence knew just how often asked himself the same question.

 _I am no Sith,_ the voice continued. _It is true that I use their methods when it suits me, but I have always forged my own path. We are much the same in this respect._

In spite of himself, Kylo took a step forward. "Who are you, then?" he said aloud. His voice echoed in the huge, empty chamber.

_One who wishes to bring order to the galaxy. One who sees before her the instrument to achieve it._

Those words rankled, and Kylo drew back. He wasn't an instrument. He would no longer allow himself to be used.

The presence responded to his unvoiced thoughts. _We are all instruments of the Force. There is no shame in it. But to achieve the order you seek, the Force must be balanced. And to achieve balance, you need the girl. I can show you how to bring her here._

Rey. The image of her burst into Kylo's mind. Without meaning to, he took several steps forward.

As he approached, a figure rose from the holocron: a human woman draped in sweeping robes, a hood obscuring all but the lower half of her face. She did not look solid enough to be corporeal, but it was clear that she was more substantial—more real, somehow—than a standard holoprojection.

Kylo stopped short, looking the figure up and down. The lines around her mouth spoke of advanced age, yet she stood straight-backed and proud before him.

"Who _are_ you?"

"In my life, I was known by more than one name. Another similarity I believe we share. But for now, you may call me Kreia."

 _In my life._ Why was she speaking in the past tense?

"Are you dead?" Kylo blurted out.

He instantly felt foolish, childish for asking such a question. Picking up on his embarrassment, Kreia offered him an indulgent smile, although Kylo had no way of knowing whether it reached her veiled eyes.

"In the traditional sense, yes. My body has long since decayed. What you see before you is no more than a memory, an incomplete copy of a once-living consciousness."

A hundred more questions jostled in his mind. Kylo selected the first one that occurred to him. "What's a holocron doing here? On Telos, I mean?"

In his studies with Luke, he had come to associate holocrons—Sith and Jedi alike—with temples and tombs. As far as he knew, the Telos facility was neither of those things.

Kreia raised her arms, gesturing expansively to the chamber around them. "A fallen Jedi master named Atris cloistered herself here during the Jedi Civil War. Over the years, she acquired an extensive collection of Sith artifacts. I was able to hide my holocron safely among them."

Kylo had never heard of anyone named Atris, but he remembered the Jedi Civil War from the history lessons his mother had forced upon him as a child.

"The Jedi Civil War was thousands of years ago."

This information did not appear to surprise Kreia in the slightest. "Has it been so long? I confess to having slept through most of it."

"You're awake now, though." Kylo took another step toward her, frowning, suspicion belatedly beginning to take root. "Why?"

"Because of you, Kylo Ren. I sensed you the moment your ship landed. Your presence in the Force proved impossible to ignore."

"I've been here before, years ago," he countered. "You didn't sense me then?"

Kreia nodded. "Indeed I did. But you were a child then, raw and untrained, and thus of little interest to me. Moreover, I saw the corruption growing in your heart, and I expected it to consume you. I did not see any utility in a boy who succumbed so easily to the darkness."

_A boy who succumbed so easily to the darkness._

He thought of Snoke, whispering to him in his dreams, plying him with lies and flattery. Then he pictured his uncle standing over him as he slept, glowing green blade held aloft.

With difficulty, Kylo wrenched himself back to the present. "So what _utility_ do you see in me now?"

If Kreia could sense the anger boiling off him, she ignored it. Her voice remained infuriatingly calm. "I have already told you. I believe you are capable of bringing order to the galaxy, although not on your own. As I said, you will need the girl by your side."

Another mention of Rey. "What do you know about her?" he asked quickly.

"Only what I have seen in your mind. She is young, and strong in the Force. You desire her...companionship."

Kylo felt warmth bloom in his cheeks. Bitterness and embarrassment warred inside him. "She doesn't want anything to do with me," he said, knowing he sounded petulant and hating himself for it.

"That may be true for the moment. But the bond you share with her is strong, perhaps the strongest I have seen. She will not be able to resist its pull forever."

"She's done a pretty good job so far. It's been two years, and she's only let me in once. And that was just to make sure I wasn't dead."

"Precisely. If she felt nothing for you, why would she care whether you lived or died?"

Kylo found no response. Once again, Kreia was giving voice to a question he had asked himself many times.

"I have seen her in your mind's eye," Kreia went on. "She is lonely. She surrounds herself with friends and allies, but in her heart she knows that whatever she may feel for them, it will never run as deep as her connection to you. Not when the Force itself brought you together."

Kylo shook his head. It was too good to be true, too close to what he had hoped for. "If you've been rifling around in my memories, then you should know that she's already chosen the Resistance over me."

"And I'm sure she believes you chose the First Order over her."

"I didn't—"

"But you did. You spoke of letting old things die, yet you placed yourself at the head of a regressive regime. You attempted to murder her mentor and her friends. Tell me, do you think she views these as the actions of a man who cares for her?"

Kylo clenched his fists. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to pick the holocron up and dash it to pieces against the floor.

"Destroying my holocron will not make my words any less true."

"I don't need your moralizing," he spat. His fury had risen to a pitch he could no longer ignore. "You said you could show me how to bring Rey here. If you can't do that, you're useless to me, and there's no reason I shouldn't destroy you."

Kreia's jaw tightened, the corners of her lips twitching downward. It was the first display of genuine emotion Kylo had seen from her since she appeared. But when she spoke, her voice stayed level.

"Vulnerability," she said.

For a second, Kylo thought he must have misheard. "What?"

"You need to show her vulnerability. The conflict, the sentimentality, the pull to the light—all of the traits you so despise in yourself—these are what will bring the girl to you in the end. She is a scavenger by nature, one who has spent her whole life salvaging and mending broken things. You must show her your brokenness and your capacity to be made whole."

Kylo closed his eyes, memories tugging at him like a swift current.

 _I can feel the conflict in you,_ Rey had said, standing so near to him in that little elevator. _It's tearing you apart._

He still remembered the way she smelled: like a thunderstorm, like the ocean.

"Well?" said Kreia. A hint of impatience crept into her tone.

Kylo looked up. Although he could not see Kreia's eyes, her posture gave the impression that she was watching him keenly.

He had no reason to trust this woman. When he slipped into the Force and tried to probe her thoughts, her intentions, he found nothing but a solid wall of white mist.

But what could Kreia do to him, ultimately? She had no physical form, and whatever was left of her was tied to a fragile glass sculpture, easily destroyed if need be.

Maybe she truly wanted to bring order to the galaxy. Maybe their interests really did align.

Still, Kylo raised his mental shields and resolved to keep his thoughts guarded for the rest of his time in the facility. It had been foolish to allow her into his mind in the first place. He would not make that mistake again.

If Kreia noticed that he shut her out, she did not acknowledge it. Kylo's gaze traveled to where her eyes must be, under the hood.

"Tell me what to say."

He did not think he would regret this.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You heard that right, folks: Kreia ships it. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Rey and Kylo meet up, and things go...uh...about as well as you'd expect.

 

Rey punched in the coordinates for Telos IV and then leaned back in the captain's chair, the Falcon groaning and jolting around her as it made what would hopefully be this journey's final jump to hyperspace. For what felt like the hundredth time, she entertained the possibility that this was all an enormous mistake.

Piloting the Falcon on her own was difficult enough, and the route to the Telos system involved multiple hyperlane transfers. Rumor had it that the transfer points were infested with pirates, hiding out on abandoned Imperial guard posts in the hopes that some ill-defended cargo ship might pass by. Thankfully, Rey had been able to fly through unmolested; she wasn't sure whether to attribute this to sheer luck or the Falcon's outward appearance. Maybe the pirates had taken one look at the ship and decided that no one flying such a dingy old freighter could possibly have any cargo worth stealing.

If pirates _had_ decided to attack the ship, there would have been little Rey could do to stop them. She had no co-pilot to operate the shields, no one in the gunner seat to return fire.

That made her think of Chewie, and of Finn. She hadn't said goodbye to either of them, hadn't told them where she was going or why.

Guilt rose up inside her, leaving a hard lump in her throat. She recalled how she left the Resistance base on Dxun: evading the search party the officers sent after her, waiting for nightfall and then sneaking into the hangar to steal the Falcon.

_It wasn't stealing,_ she reminded herself. _Chewie gave it to you before he left for Kashyyyk._

Still, she had knocked out the guards posted around the hangar, rendering them unconscious with the Force. It was the same technique Kylo Ren had used against her on the day they met.

Rey struggled to reconcile that version of him with the man who sat beside her in the jungle hours ago, making his quiet confession—the man she couldn't help but think of as _Ben,_ no matter how vehemently he rejected the name.

She knew what the Resistance officers would say: that she had let herself be manipulated again, that this was exactly why her connection to Kylo Ren posed such a danger to them all. But that same connection allowed her to sense the truth in his words as he spoke to her. When she had touched his hand this time, there were no visions of the future: instead, the full weight of his emotions crashed over her—and yes there was rage, and lust for power, and a burning desire to prove himself—but there was also loneliness, and regret, and a well of sorrow so deep she could hardly bring herself to peer down into it.

He felt cut off, abandoned, adrift. He buckled under the terrible weight of a legacy he did not ask for. Rey had not realized, until that moment, just how similar they were.

_That's what he wants you to believe,_ said a small, unwelcome voice in the back of her mind. It sounded eerily like Luke.

"No,” Rey said aloud in the empty cockpit. It was different this time, she was sure of it. The First Order had rejected Ben Solo, had left him for dead. He would have to see the rightness in bringing them down, in returning to the light. And perhaps if she brought Ben back to the Resistance, and he helped them defeat the First Order, then the officers would forgive Rey for her lie of omission. They would celebrate her bravery instead of sending her away.

Rey checked the navigational holoscreen. There were a few more hours before she was set to arrive. Plenty of time to think about what she would say to Ben when she saw him.

 

***

 

Rey brought the Falcon down carefully onto the landing pad outside the polar base, her grip tightening on the steering column as violent winds buffeted the ship, nearly knocking her off course. She was reminded of the sandstorms on Jakku, the ones that the Teedos referred to as _X'us'R'iia._ They would have called anyone who tried to fly a ship through those storms mad. Perhaps Rey was mad for flying in this one.

She barely had time to power off the sub-light engines before the landing pad opened beneath her. Something—a tractor beam if she had to guess—began to pull the Falcon down slowly into an underground hangar. Through the viewport, Rey watched the slice of white sky overhead grow smaller and smaller as the landing pad re-sealed itself. Then the last of chink of daylight was gone, and she couldn't help but think of prison cells, of tombs. Her shiver had nothing to do with the cold.

Rey squared her shoulders, steeling herself. She had nothing to fear from this place, nothing to fear from Ben Solo. She marched down the cockpit access corridor and punched the button to lower the Falcon's boarding ramp, then stepped out into the buzzing, artificial lights of the hangar.

A towering droid stood at the bottom of the ramp, surveying her with narrowed optical sensors. Rey froze in place, suddenly wishing she hadn't left her blaster back in the cockpit.

The droid spoke. "Warm greeting: hello, organic female. You will be pleased to hear that my master has ordered me not to kill you, maim you, or harm you in any way."

Rey could tell that the droid meant this to be reassuring, but there was a clear note of disappointment in its metallic voice. She crossed her arms. "Who is your master?"

"Answer: we have not exchanged names or titles. I can tell you that he is male, tall relative to other humans, and possesses a pale pink epidermis with a great deal of dark-pigmented follicular growth around the region of his skull."

_Pale pink epidermis._ Before Rey could surrender to the wild urge to laugh, a door at the far end of the hangar slid open. Ben Solo tore into the room, cheeks flushed and hair disheveled. Rey immediately noticed that he had traded the mechanic’s jumpsuit for a soft-looking gray shirt paired with loose black trousers. She got the impression that this outfit was much more comfortable than the cape and stiff, quilted tunic he had favored as Supreme Leader.

Ben skidded to a halt when he saw her, and once again Rey found herself the subject of his intense gaze. He looked at her like he couldn't really believe she was there, standing before him in the flesh. He looked at her like he was trying to see past her body and into her very thoughts.

It took her a moment to remember that he could, in fact, do just that. Instinctively, she raised her mental shields.

Ben flinched and took a step back, but seemed to recover quickly. "You came."

The hesitance in his voice almost made it sound like a question.

She nodded. "I did."  _And please, please tell me it wasn't a mistake._

Ben turned to the droid, but kept glancing back at Rey. "Why didn't you tell me she was here?"

"Indignant reply: master, you instructed me not to disturb you while you were—"

"Fine, fine. That's enough." He cut the droid off with a hurried wave of his hand.

"You didn't tell me you had a droid," said Rey. She didn't want to think about what else he might not have told her. "What's it called?"

The droid spoke up before Ben could answer. "Introduction: I am an HK-4000 model personal security droid, manufactured by Czerka Arms Incorporated." It began to rattle off a long, complicated serial number.

"I'm not saying all that," Rey interrupted. "What if I just call you HK?"

The droid cocked its head to one side, considering. "Assessment: acceptable."

Rey turned her attention back to Ben. "What do you need a personal security droid for anyway?"

She hadn't meant it as insult, but she could tell he took it as such. "The First Order might still be after me. I needed someone to keep watch while I slept, and droids are more loyal than humans." There was a distinct tang of bitterness in his voice.

"Is that why you came here?" Rey pressed. "To hide from the First Order?"

Ben's frown deepened. He clearly didn't like to think of himself as the sort of person who _hid._ "I needed to go somewhere isolated to regroup. Somewhere I could plan my next move without any distractions."

She wanted to ask him what this next move would be, but some instinct told her it wasn't a good idea to go down that line of questioning, at least not yet. Instead, she gestured to the hangar around them. "What is this place?"

"An old smuggler hideout," Ben said tersely. "Abandoned now."

_Han told him about this place,_ Rey guessed at once. Maybe Han had even brought Ben here as a child.

She couldn't imagine what it was like to grow up with a father who took her on trips to secret hideouts, who loved her enough to want to show her the whole galaxy. Ben had all that, and he had thrown it away.

Some measure of anger or jealousy must have shown on her face, because Ben asked, "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Ignoring both his question and her better judgment, Rey plunged ahead recklessly. "So what's the plan, then?" she asked, half-mocking. "Are you still going to try to kill Hux? To re-install yourself as Supreme Leader?"

Ben's eyes seemed to darken, and his expression turned stony. "Yes. And I'm not going to _try._ I'm going to succeed."

There was something infuriating about the shaky arrogance in his voice.

"And how do you imagine you'll do that?" Rey demanded. "Even if you manage to kill Hux, what's to stop the First Order from turning on you again? Is anyone there still loyal to you?"

Ben swallowed hard. His right eyelid twitched minutely. "I can make them follow me again. But I can't do it alone." He spoke haltingly, like each word cost him a great deal of effort. "I need you with me, Rey. You—you balance me out. They think I'm reckless and unstable. But I won't be anymore, not if you're around, and they'll see that. We can rule side by side, as equals, and—" he broke off, seeing the expression on her face.

Rey didn't know whether she wanted to yell or let out a hysterical laugh. It was almost the exact same plea he had made two years ago.

"We've been over this,” she spat. “I'm not joining the First Order. I saw what they did to the Hosnian system. I _know_ what they've been trying to do to me and everyone I've ever called a friend."

"But that's just it." Kylo took a step towards her, entreating. "Together we can make things different. We can use the infrastructure of the First Order to shape the galaxy the way we want. To change everything for the better."

Now Rey did laugh—a derisive, humorless sound. "Is that what you were doing while you were Supreme Leader? Changing things for the better? Is that what you told yourself while you were hunting down your own mother?"

Finally Rey saw some of her own anger reflected on Kylo's face. "Anyone who stands against me is my enemy," he said rigidly. "It doesn't matter if we share a bloodline."

Rey shook her head. She couldn't believe she had agreed to come here, that this was all happening again. Nothing had changed since that day on Snoke's ship, not for either of them. Ben— _Kylo_ —was still a power-hungry monster, and Rey was still the naive child who believed she had changed him. In that moment, she didn't know which of them she hated more.

"When we touched hands, I thought there might still be some light left in you."

Kylo looked as though her words caused him physical pain. "You spent too much time around Skywalker. Listen, Rey: there's no light side. There's no dark side, either. There's just the Force, and people trying to impose their own sense of morality onto it. That's all."

"Is that what Snoke told you?" Rey shot back.

"No, actually." He gave her a hollow, joyless smile that looked more like a grimace. "Don't you remember what he called me, that night in the throne room?"

"Not exactly. I was a bit preoccupied, wondering whether or not you were going to run me through with a lightsaber."

Kylo winced at that, but continued, "He called me son of darkness. Heir apparent to Lord Vader. He used the idea of the dark side—and my grandfather's connection to it—to manipulate me into serving his own interests. It wasn't until after I killed him that I realized what a farce it all was."

"But just because Snoke used the dark side to manipulate you doesn't mean it isn't real," Rey insisted. "I should know. I felt it, calling to me from the cave on Ach-To. And when we fought on Starkiller, I...I heard a voice in my head, telling me to kill you."

The words came out in a rush. It was the first time she had told anyone about that voice: the icy whisper advising her how easy it would be, how good and righteous it would feel, to stab Kylo Ren through the heart as he lay there, maimed and struggling in the snow.

Kylo did not seem at all disturbed by this information. "That was probably Snoke, looking to trade one apprentice for another," he said, half bitter, half matter-of-fact. "He thought having me kill my father would make me stronger. He was very disappointed when it didn't work out that way."

The image of Han Solo with a red, crackling blade shot through his chest sprang into Rey's mind, and with it came a fresh surge of anger. She closed her eyes, willing both away. "It didn't make you stronger because you still feel a pull to the light. I know you do, Ben," she said, reverting back to his birth name, making her own plea now. "I felt it, both times we touched hands."

He shook his head. "What I feel isn't  a pull to the light. I used to think it was too, but I was wrong. It's just a pull to the familiar. There's—there's a part of me that wonders what my life would be like if my mother never sent me away. If Snoke never found me, if Skywalker never came into my room that night." His voice was low and confessional, and he swallowed before continuing. "But that's all in the past now. It's gone. It's done. I can only move forward."

Rey hesitated for a fraction of a second, then crossed hangar with quick, purposeful strides until there was only a hand's breadth between them. All the while Kylo stayed rooted to the spot, looking like he couldn't decide whether to recoil or move closer. His eyes bored into hers.

"You know that's not true, Ben," she said softly. "You can always go back. It's not too late. Leia—your mother still cares about you. She wants you to come home."

Kylo made an exasperated noise and took a half-step away from her, running a gloved hand through his hair. "Even if that were true, it doesn't matter. Has it ever occured to you to _think_ about what my life would look like if I went back to my mother? If I decided to turn traitor and join the Resistance? Do you really believe your friends would welcome me with open arms? After everything I've done?"

Rey opened her mouth to respond, then shut it. She wanted to tell him that the Resistance would be happy to have him if he fought for them, if he gave them information that helped bring down the First Order. But then, with a sinking feeling, she remembered the cheer that had gone up in the mess hall when General Ematt told them Kylo Ren was dead.

"If I defected," Kylo went on, "I'd be lucky to spend the rest of my life in a cell. More likely they'd just shoot me on sight."

"Leia wouldn't let that happen," Rey said vehemently.

Kylo gave her an incredulous look. "My mother wouldn't have any say in the matter. You told me yourself they were going to send her into exile, all because they thought she might still be communicating with me. You told me they were planning to do the same thing to _you,_ Rey."

"I thought they'd change their minds if I brought you back!" The words burst out of her, unbidden. Rey knew at once that she had made a terrible mistake.

"Is that why you came here?" Kylo asked, after a pause. He stood very still and did not break eye contact. "To deliver me to the Resistance? To use me to redeem yourself in their eyes?"

Rey didn't answer. She couldn't bring herself to lie to him.

She had barred him from her mind, but Kylo must have seen the guilt written on her face and in her posture. His mask of forced calm crumbled away. "Go, then," he snarled. "Leave. Run away back to the Resistance, even though they don't want you. Tell them you tried to save my soul, and maybe they'll send you into exile with my mother instead of locking you away."

Rage, pure and blazing, flared up in Rey. A small part was reserved for herself—stupid, naive _child_ —but most of it was directed at Kylo Ren: the spoiled, selfish boy who had been given everything but deserved worse than nothing, who rejected the love of his family, who murdered his own father and maimed her best friend, and who, after everything he had done, was still arrogant enough to believe that Rey would agree to stand at his side and help him run a genocidal regime.

As abruptly as it came, the anger burnt itself out, solidifying into something cold and hard. "If they send me away with Leia, at least I won't be alone," said Rey, speaking with quiet vindictiveness, "which is more than anyone can say for you."

Several things happened then, in rapid succession. Kylo's right hand, which had been clenched at his side, opened and twitched minutely toward the hilt of his lightsaber.

Rey didn't stop to think. Instinct roaring through her, she blasted Kylo off his feet with the Force.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the droid—she had almost forgotten it was there—raise an arm to fire on her, to defend its master.

"No, NO!" Kylo shouted from the floor, and the droid's arm was wrenched from its body with a squeal of metal, flying across the across the hangar to crash against the far wall.

"If you hurt her, I'll make sure there won't be enough of you left to sell for scrap," said Kylo, hoarse and wild-eyed.

Rey watched him, still wary, as he stumbled to his feet.

The droid looked remarkably unfazed by Kylo's threat and the loss of its arm. "Patient explanation: master, this female organic clearly meant to harm you."

"Me? Harm him?" Rey's voice rose in pitch and volume. "He was the one reaching for his lightsaber!"

Kylo seemed to struggle for words, looking anguished. "I didn't—it wasn't intentional. Rey—"

But Rey backed away from him, moving towards the Falcon. It had been a mistake to come here, to put even a single ounce of trust in Kylo Ren. He had shown her who he was time and time again; why did she keep allowing herself to be drawn in?

Kylo called her name a second time, but Rey was already up the boarding ramp. She jabbed the button to retract it and seal the ship, then raced to the cockpit.

The first thing she did was locate her blaster and strap it to her belt. The solid weight of it against her hip was an instant comfort, and she sank gratefully into the captain’s chair.

She stayed slumped like that for a few minutes, staring out through the viewport at the dull gray confines of the hangar. Soon the adrenaline from her confrontation with Kylo began to ebb away. Part of her was screaming to get out out of the hangar and off this planet, to put as much space as possible between herself and Kylo Ren. But she hadn't slept since that last restless night on Dxun, and it seemed exhaustion was finally catching up to her.

She should sleep, she decided. She would need to be fully alert if she wanted to make it through the polar storms and the hyperlane transfers in one piece. And besides, if she stayed awake, she would have to decide what she was going to do—where she was going to _go_ —next. She couldn't bring herself to think about that choice now, with her mind clouded and her eyelids heavy.

Kylo Ren was the complicating factor. Rey felt certain he was still in the hangar, watching the Falcon to see if she emerged. She didn't know what he meant to do now that she had rebuked him a second time; somehow she doubted he would try to attack her without provocation, but there was no way to be sure without opening her mind to him, and Rey wasn't stupid enough to make herself _that_ vulnerable again.

Leaning over the control panel, she painstakingly activated every single defense mechanism the Falcon had—at least the ones that were operable when the ship was parked. She knew it wouldn't stop Kylo if decided to force his way in, but it would buy her enough time to wake up and prepare to defend herself.

With that thought, Rey curled up in the captain's chair and drifted off into uneasy sleep.

 

***

 

She woke to the steady pulse of red light. For one horrifying moment, Rey thought it must be Kylo Ren standing over her with his lightsaber drawn, poised to strike. She felt a swoop of relief when she saw that the light came from the control panel in front of her instead.

But that relief curdled into dread almost at once. It was the warning light on the Falcon's navigational console. Ignoring the soreness that came with sleeping in an odd position, Rey sat upright and tapped the holoscreen. A message sprang up.

ERROR: NAVIGATION OFFLINE. ELECTROMAGNETIC INTERFERENCE DETECTED.

She stared at the message. She knew electromagnetic disturbances were sometimes used to keep ships grounded in cities under blockade, but otherwise she had no experience with them. And besides, she wasn't in a city right now; in fact, she was leagues and leagues away from any trace of civilization, so who—

Of course. Rey felt like smacking her forehead. She couldn't believe the answer hadn't occurred to her right away.

She leapt from the captain's chair and strode down the cockpit access corridor. Rage mounting inside her, she punched the button to lower the boarding ramp.

As she had suspected, Kylo Ren was still in the hangar. He sat cross-legged on the floor, tapping listlessly at a datapad while the one-armed security droid paced the perimeter of the room.

He jumped to his feet the instant Rey emerged, almost dropping his datapad. "Rey—" he began.

Rey pulled the blaster from her belt and pointed it directly at him, her finger resting on the trigger. "Turn off the interference.”

She tried to sound calm, authoritative. She knew Kylo could deflect a blaster shot easily with his lightsaber, but apart from the Force itself, she had no other weapon to leverage against him.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rey watched the droid aim its own blaster at her.

Kylo didn't spare at glance Rey's weapon. His gaze went right to her face, and he frowned. "What are you talking about?"

The confusion in his voice sounded genuine, but Rey wasn't about to let him fool her again. "The electromagnetic interference. I know you're using it to keep the Falcon grounded, to trap me here. Turn it off."

"Electromagnetic—what? I haven't done anything!"

Rey scrutinized him. There was puzzlement in his expression, and a little fear, but no trace of deceit.

_You can't be sure of that unless you open your mind to him,_ she reminded herself.

"Then where's the interference coming from?"

"Interjection," the droid piped up, its blaster scope still fixed on Rey, "it is likely that the interference is the result of a geomagnetic storm."

Rey and Kylo turned, almost in unison, to stare at the droid.

"Explanation," the droid continued, "the Sith bombardment of Telos IV in the early stages of the Jedi Civil War permanently destabilized the planet's magnetic field, leading to frequent geomagnetic storms in the polar regions."

There was a short pause, then Rey and Kylo spoke at the same time.

"Why didn't you tell me this earlier?" Kylo demanded.

"How long do the storms last?" asked Rey.

Predictably, the droid addressed Kylo's question first. "Answer: you never asked, master." Then it turned to Rey and said, "Answer: typically several months."

_Several months._

Suddenly Rey felt nauseated, lightheaded. She dropped her right arm, letting the blaster hang limply at her side.

_Several months._

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Kylo watching her. "Rey—" he started.

Whatever he was going to say, she didn't want to hear it. "You knew about this," she said. She was surprised at how the words came out: cold and toneless, even though every particle of her body felt like screaming. "You knew about the storms. You knew that if you got me here, you could trap me."

Kylo shook his head, eyes wide. "I didn't. I swear."

"Why should I believe you? Why should I believe a word you say?"

By way of an answer, he ripped off his gloves and approached her, right hand outstretched. "I can show you."

His voice was low and desperate. Rey fought the impulse to recoil. "I'm not stupid enough to fall for that again," she said.

"There's nothing to fall for. I wouldn't—"

But the rest of his words were lost to her, because Rey felt hot tears stinging the corners of her eyes, and she would be damned if she let Kylo Ren see them this time. She turned and dashed back up the Falcon's boarding ramp.

Once inside, she finally allowed the sobs that had been building in her throat to escape. She sank down onto the floor, hugging her knees to her chest.

_Several months._

She thought of Finn and Rose, of General Organa. What would they think when she did not return? Would they assume she was a traitor, or just a coward? Would they begin to believe she was dead? Rey wished she could get a message to them somehow, but she knew that the electromagnetic interference had almost certainly knocked out the Falcon’s comm system as well.

No, she was stuck here alone with Kylo Ren. For _several months._

An image swam unexpectedly to the forefront of her mind: the wall of her hollowed-out AT-AT on Jakku, the one marked with thousands of little scratches.

Rey hiccupped, wiped her eyes. Luckily, she knew all about waiting.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DEUS EX GEOMAGNETIC STORM.


	6. Chapter 6

Rey did not leave the Falcon.

Kylo spent the first night after her arrival outside the ship, dozing fitfully on the cold, metal-grated floor of the hangar. He woke the next morning with sore limbs and a pounding headache.

"Suggestion: allow me to guard the female organic, Master," HK said to him. "Unlike your species I do not require sleep."

Kylo glanced back up at the Falcon. Part of him was tempted to force his way inside; he could shatter the viewport, wrench down the boarding ramp, burn an opening in the hull with his saber. But then he recalled the look on Rey's face before she fled from him, and he knew that breaking into the ship wouldn't make her listen, wouldn't help her to understand. It would only turn her away from him further.

So he left the hangar, instructing the droid to contact him if there was any indication Rey might emerge. He made his way through the facility's twisting passages until he came to the set of great stone doors. They stood flung open, and Kreia waited for him in the darkened chamber beyond.

The holocron pulsed with violet light. Kreia's ghostly form seemed to flicker. "The Jedi girl is here," said Kreia without preamble. "Why are you not with her?"

Kylo felt a spur of annoyance. Rey was no Jedi; their order had died with Luke. He was about to say as much, but quickly thought better of it. He hadn't sought out Kreia to argue.

"It didn't work," he said. "I did what you told me to do, said what you told me to say. None of it worked. She's hiding from me now."

Kreia's lips tightened. Kylo imagined her eyes narrowing beneath the hood. "Tell me exactly what you said to her, exactly as you said it."

Kylo did his best to recount their conversation in the hangar. By the time he was done, Kreia's grimace had deepened into a scowl. "You did not do as I instructed,” she said.

"I did. I made myself _vulnerable_ for her. I told her I needed her by my side." He couldn't keep his voice from rising.

"You offered her a position at the head of a regime responsible for atrocities against her friends and allies, and you are surprised that she did not accept? That she rebuked you? You are more foolish than I thought."

_You are more foolish than I thought._

It was the sort of thing Snoke used to say to him. Kylo felt his face grow warm, felt his hands ball into fists. He wanted to ignite his saber and cut the old woman down where she stood. He wanted to crush her holocron beneath the heel of his boot.

"I offered her a chance to change the First Order from within," he grit out instead. "To change the whole galaxy."

Kreia shook her head. "You do not need the First Order to change the galaxy."

"What do you mean?"

"You are the the two most powerful beings in the galaxy already, the two sides of the Force made manifest. Next to you, all the blasters and ships and soldiers your Order can produce are meaningless. You do not need them."

Kylo frowned. He knew he was strong in the Force, and that Rey nearly matched him. But he could not picture the two of them facing the entire First Order alone and surviving.

"What are you suggesting?"

"I am suggesting," said Kreia, speaking slowly as though she were addressing a particularly dim child, "that you make amends with the Jedi girl."

Irritation needled Kylo again. "How can I do that if she won't come out of her ship?"

"You will have to wait, though not very long, I suspect. I doubt she has admitted it to herself, but the girl feels the same pull towards you that you feel to her. And the storm has given you some additional time."

_The storm._

Kylo took a step forward. "You knew about the storms?" he demanded. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Kreia gave him a small, sly smile. "You did not ask, Kylo Ren."

It was deeply unnerving to hear her echo the droid.

"And besides," she continued. "I did not sense that there was one so near. My perception of the outside world has waned over the millennia."

"You didn't have any trouble sensing me. Or Rey."

Kreia nodded. "Indeed. But the two of you are far more deadly than any storm."

 

***

 

Days passed, and Kylo waited. At night, he slept in a too-small bunk in the facility's dormitory, trying not to imagine Rey curled up in the much larger bed aboard the Falcon. He couldn't help but remember a comment from one of his father's friends, hinting that Kylo himself was conceived in that bed. The idea of Rey lying in the place where _that_ happened filled him with equal parts disgust and some strange, hollow emotion he didn't care to interrogate.

Other memories tugged at him in his waking moments. Moving through the facility, he recalled racing down its corridors as a child, laughing while his father chased after him.

 _Slow down, Ben!_ Han would call out, pretending to pant with exhaustion. _I'm not as young as I used to be!_

In the facility's kitchen, standing over the sink and wolfing down another bland, dehydrated meal, he remembered his father examining the shelves full of dusty provisions and shaking his head.

_These things look about a thousand years old. Feel sorry for any poor son of a bitch who has to eat one._

_If this storm lasts a few months longer,_ Kylo thought wryly, _that son of a bitch will be me._

Then his mother's face appeared in his mind's eye, and Kylo felt an intense urge to smash the kitchen to pieces.

He needed a distraction—badly. But the best distraction he could ask for was bolted away in his father's old ship, concealed from him in body and mind. Occasionally he would venture into the hangar to see if physical proximity would allow him to sense Rey better, to glean some scrap of what she was thinking or feeling. It was no use; he could sense her presence in the Living Force, but that was all. Her mind remained barred to him.

Kreia did not provide much in the way of support. _Patience_ was her refrain every time he expressed doubts that Rey would ever emerge from the Falcon. To divert his thoughts from Rey and his parents, Kylo would sometimes ask Kreia about her life—about the Jedi Civil War, about the Sith Empire, about the history of Telos and the polar facility in particular. Kreia did not seem to appreciate the questioning; her answers were all either curt and matter-of-fact, or so vague as to be meaningless.

"For one who wishes to let the past die, you spend far too much time dwelling on ancient history," she said icily.

Luckily, the droid offered better entertainment. When it wasn't keeping watch in the hangar, Kylo conscripted HK to train with him.

The first time he tossed the droid a sparring staff, HK looked down at it almost doubtfully. "Query: Master, are you certain about this course of action? I am not programmed for training. I am programmed to kill."

"I know," said Kylo, picking up a staff of his own. He gestured to the sparring circle they stood in. "And right now, I want you to try your best to kill me."

The droid was a more dangerous opponent than he anticipated. Its attacks were swift and merciless, and it moved with unexpected grace. More than once Kylo had to use the Force to shield himself from a blow.

In some ways it was better than training with his knights; the droid never tired, and Kylo didn’t have to worry about pushing it too hard. Any damage he did to HK was easily repaired, with no danger of lingering resentment or a protracted stay in a bacta tank. Kylo upgraded his assessment of the droid from _bloodthirsty and incompetent_ to _bloodthirsty but somewhat lazy._

 _The Order needs a whole battalion of these things,_ he caught himself thinking after a particularly brutal sparring match.

He shook his head. The First Order was not his concern anymore, not until he figured out how to get through to Rey.

Following these training sessions, Kylo had taken to soaking in the thermal springs beneath the facility. He would peel off his sweaty clothes, unselfconscious in the empty chamber, and then slip gratefully into the pool, letting the hot water soothe away his aches.

With his head resting against the lip of the pool and his eyes closed, his thoughts were relatively calm for once. At least until he heard the sound of soft footfalls.

His eyes snapped open. Rey stood on the other side of the chamber, frozen on the stairs leading down.

Shock coursed through him. He had been beginning to suspect that Rey would never emerge from the Falcon, that she would wait out the whole storm in there. He certainly never expected to see her here.

Her eyes were wide. Even through the dimness and and clouds of steam, Kylo could see the color creeping up her neck.

_It could just be the heat._

But then Kylo remembered the way she had looked at him two years ago, when the Force had connected them while he was in a similar state of undress. Kylo recalled the way her words had trailed off, the strain in her voice as she asked him to put something on.

Experimentally, he rose from his seated position. When he stood, the surface of the water barely skimmed his navel.

Rey's eyes darted downward, then quickly back up again. The color was high in her cheeks now.

 _Definitely not just the heat,_ he thought with a flash of savage triumph.

But he didn't have time to savor the realization. Rey abruptly turned on her heel and fled, running back up the stairs and out of sight.

 

***

 

Minutes later, after hurriedly toweling himself dry and putting his clothes back on, Kylo strode down the corridor to the hangar, cursing himself.

He had driven Rey off again _._ Instead of trying to talk to her, trying to reason with her, he had indulged in his own misplaced vanity.

 _What did you expect her to do?_ whispered a nasty voice in the back of his mind. _Jump into your arms the second she saw your bare chest?_

Kylo held his fists rigidly at his sides, tamping down on his impulse to punch something. Fortunately, when he came to the hangar and saw the droid pacing slow circles around the Falcon, he found another outlet for his rage.

"Why didn't you tell me Rey left the ship?" he demanded.

The droid stopped its pacing. "Query: the female organic has escaped?"

Kylo felt his scowl grow more pronounced. Rey had not _escaped_ from anything; it wasn't as though he had imprisoned her in the Falcon. But he wouldn't waste time arguing this distinction with the droid. "I saw her a few minutes ago on the stairs leading down to the hot springs."

The droid tapped something on its wrist. "Confirmation: my biometric sensors indicate that the female organic is no longer aboard the ship. She must have escaped while I was trying to kill you, Master."

Kylo swore freely under his breath. "Where is she now?"

The droid called up the blue-tinted holomap of the facility. A glowing dot pulsed near its center.

"The kitchen," said Kylo at once.

Without a backward glance, he took off down the corridor, making a series of sharp turns until he came to the gleaming, white-and-chrome kitchen.

Rey was hunched at a table under the harsh, buzzing lights, practically inhaling a plate of some deeply unappetizing foodstuffs. The instant she caught sight of Kylo, her eyes widened, and she fumbled for the blaster on her belt.

Kylo raised his hands, showing her they were empty. He was grateful he had left his lightsaber in the dormitory that morning.

Rey jumped to her feet. "Stay back," she warned around a mouthful of food.

Kylo dutifully took a step away. He noticed that her hand—the one holding the blaster—shook a little. She looked tired, pale and drawn, and she wore the same gray-green military fatigues she had arrived in.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, trying to sound reassuring.

Rey swallowed and then gave him a contemptuous look. "I don't believe you."

Kylo wanted to reach out and grab her hand, to make her _see_ that he had no intention of harming her. But she hadn't reacted well to that suggestion the first time, so instead he asked, "Do you really believe I would bring you all the way here just to hurt you or kill you or—whatever it is you think I'm going to do?"

He watched Rey tense up at the word _kill_. "Why shouldn't I think that?” she snapped. “You said it yourself: anyone who stands against you is your enemy.” Her gaze flicked down to the empty holster on Kylo’s belt, then returned to his face with steely resolve. “And besides, I saw you reaching for your lightsaber earlier. In the hangar."

He shook his head. "I told you, that wasn't intentional. It was just—it's just a habit.” Taking a deep breath, he continued, “Snoke always encouraged it—channeling my emotions into violence and destruction. I'm sorry if I scared you."

He felt foolish even as he said it, but Kreia’s instructions still echoed in his mind: _you must show her vulnerability._

Rey's features softened for a moment before settling into a frown. "I'm not scared," she said with heat in her voice.

Kylo barely suppressed a snort of disbelief. "Then why have you spent the past week hiding in my father's old ship?"

Rey opened her mouth to speak and then closed it, evidently unable to come up with a satisfactory answer. They stayed like that for a few moments: silent while Rey glowered and Kylo scrutinized her face, trying to guess what she might be thinking. Eventually his gaze traveled down to the half-eaten meal in front of her.

He gestured to the plate. "You know you don't have to eat that stuff, right? It's probably centuries old by now. The rations I bought on Nar Shaddaa are much fresher."

Rey raised her eyebrows. "How do I know you haven't poisoned them?"

"I haven't," he said, irritated. "If I wanted to poison you, I'd just encourage you to keep eating the garbage on your plate."

There was a fraction of a second where Rey looked like she might laugh, but the moment passed as quickly as it came. Instead, she lowered her blaster and sank back down into the chair. "I grew up eating much worse than this," she said, sounding weary.

A memory struck Kylo then, one he knew instantly was not his own: the memory of being a small, wiry-limbed child and gratefully licking the last vestiges of some gelatinous nutrient paste from a bowl. It was objectively disgusting, and also somehow the best thing he'd ever tasted.

As he watched the adult Rey in front of him tuck back into her plate, a mixture of anger and pity stabbed at him, hot and sharp.

"Anyway," Rey continued between mouthfuls, "I depleted the Falcon's stores two days ago." She swallowed and shot a glare up at Kylo. "You may have trapped me here, but I'm not going to let you starve me."

Kylo's exasperation returned. "I'm not trying to starve you," he said, making an effort not to raise his voice. He didn't want to startle her now that she had finally put down the blaster. "And I told you. I haven't trapped you here."

Rey made a skeptical noise. "Really? You expect me to believe it was all just a coincidence? That you _accidentally_ brought me here a few hours before a massive storm showed up and grounded my ship?"

He winced. "I know—I know how it sounds. But I had no idea about the storms, Rey. I promise."

He could tell she didn't believe him. He saw it written in the furrow of her brow, her downturned mouth, the set of her shoulders. So he did the only thing he could think of: he held his gloveless hand out to her once more.

Rey looked at his hand like it was some kind of wild creature, liable to sink its teeth into her if she came too close. Then she made eye contact with Kylo, and something in her expression shifted. "Where did you get all the bruises?" she asked abruptly.

Kylo blinked, caught off guard. His hand dropped to his side. "What?"

"Your bruises." She made a vague gesture towards his chest. "The ones all over your...torso."

"Oh." Something warm stirred inside him. He swallowed. "I've been training with the droid. Sparring."

"Is that why it wasn't standing guard in the hangar?"

His annoyance flared up again. "I didn't tell the droid to—"

"Sit down," Rey interrupted. She kicked out at the chair opposite her, causing it to smack against Kylo's knees.

He stiffened, though not from pain. Snoke and Skywalker had left him with an instinctive hatred for taking orders.

 _Rey is here,_ he reminded himself. _She's not hiding, or running away, or pointing a blaster at you. So sit down, you idiot._

Kylo sat. Rey considered him for a moment, then pushed her empty plate of food away.

"The next few months will go much faster for me if I know whether or not you're lying about the storms," she said. There was a tight, rehearsed quality to her voice. "So here's how we're going to do this: I'll take your hand, and you'll show me whatever it is you want to show me. And the whole time, you'll stay out of my head. If I feel even tiniest bit pressure on my mind, I'm blasting you across the room."

Her eyes glinted. Kylo didn't doubt that she would follow through with the threat.

Rey extended her hand to him. Without pausing to think, Kylo took it.

Warmth stole through him at her touch, just as it had in the past. It took every scrap of Kylo's willpower not to deepen the connection, not to reach out for more.

Then he felt Rey beginning to prod at his mind, and he made a quick, almost unconscious decision.

He couldn't let Rey know about the holocron, about Kreia and the counsel she had given him. Even if Rey saw the truth—Kylo _hadn't_ known about the storms—he couldn't allow her to believe that any part of this was calculated, premeditated. He was unwilling to lose her trust for good.

So Kylo shielded the incriminating memories, stuffing them away into a dark corner of his mind. It was the same technique he had used to conceal thoughts from Snoke years ago, towards the end of his tenure as an apprentice.

Without warning, Rey ripped her hand from his grasp. Kylo looked up to find her slightly flushed. She would not meet his eyes.

A chill settled over him. Could she sense he was hiding something? Worse yet, did she know what it was?

"Well," Rey said after a beat, "it looks like you're not a liar." She stood and picked up her empty plate, then brought it over to the sink and began running the tap. The smell of dish soap filled the little kitchen. "You're just stupid enough to have trapped us _both_ here accidentally."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience, everyone. ❤️ Comments and kudos (but especially comments!) make my day.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO, SO SORRY ABOUT THE DELAY YOU GUYS. A lot of life has happened to me this summer. Anyone who's still following along has my eternal gratitude.

As much as Rey loved the Falcon, she was glad she no longer felt trapped inside it. True, she returned to the ship often enough to check the status of the comms and the navigation system—both of which remained stubbornly offline—but otherwise she spent most of her time exploring the underground facility.

This kept her well occupied for a few days. The facility was a sprawling complex of maze-like corridors interspersed with massive, high-ceilinged chambers. Despite having spent her adolescence navigating the twisting, corroded innards of old Star Destroyers, she got lost in it on more than one occasion.

Soon Rey began to notice evidence of the smugglers Kylo had mentioned. She came across little caches of supplies everywhere: wedged up above ceiling panels, tucked behind light fixtures, stuffed into hidden compartments of rusty storage crates. Most contained nothing of interest: just a few packets of stale rations and a dusty tube of bacta or two. But sometimes she discovered more intriguing contents. Hidden beneath a metal-grated floor tile in a narrow passageway, Rey found a wrapped bundle of old vibroswords, still humming with a faint charge. Later that day, she chanced upon a cloth sack full of what looked like spice. This she dumped down a toilet; she did not have fond memories of the spice addicts who frequented Niima Outpost.

One thing became increasingly clear: however much use smugglers had gotten out of the facility, it had almost certainly been constructed with a different purpose in mind. Rey knew smugglers, and while they were opportunistic enough to set up camp almost anywhere, they weren't inclined to invest time and energy into building a place like this.

If Rey was going to spend the next few months here, she wanted to know more about the facility's history. With a sinking feeling, she realized that would probably involve talking to Kylo Ren.

This was not an appealing prospect. While she explored, Rey did her level best to avoid Kylo. She memorized his preferred mealtimes and made sure to stay well away from the kitchen during those hours. She didn't go anywhere near the other places he frequented—the sparring chamber and the hot springs—and if she heard his footsteps coming down a corridor, she turned and made off in the opposite direction as quickly and silently as possible.

The few times they crossed paths, Kylo opened his mouth to speak, took one glance at the expression on Rey's face, and thought better of it. Then they would sweep past each other, Kylo looking wounded and annoyed while Rey schooled her features into what she hoped was an imperious glare.

Rey had two reasons for avoiding Kylo. The first one—the one she was more inclined to consciously acknowledge—was simple: Kylo was why she was trapped here. He might not have meant to trap her, but he was at fault nonetheless. _He_ was the one who had reached out to her, there in the jungle on Dxun. To Rey, the encounter had seemed like an unspoken promise: _I want to change, I will allow myself to be brought back._ Of course it was all a lie, and Kylo Ren had no intention of returning to the Light. Hells, he didn't even believe in the Light. He didn't want Rey to bring him back; he wanted Rey to help him regain the power he had lost. And thanks to his twisted ambitions, Rey was stuck here underground, cut off from her friends and allies, for months.

But power wasn't the only thing Kylo Ren wanted, which brought Rey to her second reason for avoiding him. Earlier, when they sat across from each other in the kitchen and grasped hands, Rey had reached into his mind with the goal of uncovering his intentions toward her. Had he planned to imprison her on Telos? And now that she had rejected his offer to join him a second time, did he mean to harm her—perhaps _kill_ her?

One look at Kylo's thoughts revealed that the answer to both questions was an emphatic _no_. He hadn't known about the storms. And as much as Rey's rebuke hurt him, the idea of any sort of harm coming to her filled Kylo with sick horror. 

That should have been enough for Rey. She should have released his hand the instant she learned he didn't intend to hurt or imprison her. But something else had captured her attention: a dark, half-formed undercurrent running through all of Kylo Ren's thoughts of her.

Although Rey didn't have much personal experience with the sensation, she knew it at once for what it was: desire. 

Kylo wanted her. Physically. He thought about her—or tried not to—when he touched himself. He pictured her on top of him, underneath him, pressed up against a wall, bent over a bed, hair disheveled, shining with sweat and gasping his name. It was like watching a pornographic holo, except all the scenes had been spliced together in random order.

Shocked, Rey had snatched her hand away, heat flooding her face. It was difficult to look Kylo in the eye after seeing _that._

She knew she should be disgusted. The idea of someone like Kylo Ren doing those... _things_ to her was objectively repugnant. But Rey wasn't disgusted. She couldn't even drum up any righteous anger. Instead, her mind turned to their encounter in the hot springs earlier that day. Vividly, she remembered Kylo rising from the pool in a cloud of steam, hair dripping, skin gleaming palely in the low light.

Rey did her best to banish the image from her mind. She spent the next few days striving not to dwell on what she had seen in Kylo's thoughts, which she found much easier when she didn't have to be around Kylo himself.

But now she had a decision to make. She could continue to wander the halls of the underground complex, speculating fruitlessly about who built it and why, or she could get over her discomfort and just talk to Kylo.

It wasn't as though she had any reason to fear him. She had already established that he didn't intend to harm her, which meant he wouldn't force himself on her—particularly since the Rey of his fantasies was always an _extremely_ willing and enthusiastic participant.

Really, what was the worst that could happen? That he would make an awkward pass at her? That he would ask her to rule the galaxy with him again?

An unnerving thought occured to Rey: maybe asking her to rule the galaxy with him _was_ Kylo's version of an awkward pass.

Either way, she was confident in her ability to shut him down. If Kylo refused to answer her questions, or if he insisted she _join him_ again, Rey would happily go back to avoiding him. And if he made a pass at her...well, she had two ways of dealing with those. The few times fellow Resistance fighters had propositioned her, Rey let them know politely but firmly that she wasn't interested. Back on Jakku, Rey was more likely to respond by whacking the offender across the kneecaps with her staff.

As she took a seat in the kitchen to wait for Kylo, Rey wondered which method she should employ on him, if the need arose.

She didn't have to wait long. Kylo strode into the room a few minutes after Rey sat down, yawning and running a hand through his mussed hair. He almost made it to the counter before he registered her presence.

He halted, stared at her. "Rey?"

Rey stared determinedly back. "Were you expecting someone else?"

"What are you doing here?"

His voice was a little lower and rougher than she had heard it before. She wondered if he had just woken up, if she was interrupting his breakfast.

"Waiting for you," said Rey. No need for pretense.

Kylo's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, his gaze skating across her face. Rey wondered if he thought she was lying or playing some sort of trick on him.

"Why?" he asked after a pause.

Rey made an expansive gesture, indicating the little kitchen and the sprawling facility beyond. "Because I know nothing about this place you've trapped me in. If I'm going to be stuck here for another few months, I'd at least like to have some idea where I am."

Kylo's expression contorted, and Rey thought she knew what he was going to say: _I didn't trap you._

Instead he told her, "You know where we are. The Telos system, fourth planet from the star, in the Kwymar Sector of the Outer Rim, just off the Hydian Way. Didn't you navigate here yourself?"

Rey rolled her eyes. "Don't pretend you don't know what I mean. I know this place hasn't always been a smugglers' hideout. Who built it? And why did they build it here, of all places?"

Kylo considered her for a moment. "Telos used to have a planet-wide irrigation system," he said finally. "This place was its hub."

That sent Rey's thoughts spiraling. She didn't know much about irrigation systems—Jakku wasn't famed for its agricultural output—but she could make a few educated guesses.

"That means there must be miles of pipes or tunnels or something, branching away from this place."

"Probably." Kylo was not looking at her; he seemed intent on marring the tile floor with thick black scuff marks from his boot.

"There was a door I couldn't figure out how to open, a couple of levels down. I bet that's how you access the tunnels."

Kylo made a noncommittal sound, gaze still fixed on the floor.

Rey's annoyance set in quickly, as it often did around Kylo. "Are you listening to me? Those tunnels—I might have found a way to get us out of here."

Now Kylo looked up at her. "I know the door your talking about. It's keypad-locked, triple-reinforced durasteel. Unless you happen to know the code, we're not getting it open."

"We could use the Force to—"

"To what? Blast through? This place is thousands of years old. Do you _want_ to trigger a cave-in?"

"Well, what's your suggestion then?" Rey snapped, her annoyance boiling over into anger. For a few, shining seconds, she had allowed herself to believe that she found a way out of this place, a way to return to her friends in the Resistance in a matter of days rather than months. She didn't know which was worse: her dashed hopes or the fact that Kylo had been the one to dash them.

"We can wait," Kylo said simply.

Rey folder her arms. "Maybe _you_ can."

Kylo didn't respond to that. He turned to the cabinets and pulled out one of his ration packs from Nar Shaddaa—Rey still refused to touch them—ripped the packet open with his teeth, and proceeded to mix the contents with a carefully-measured half-cup of water from the sink, ignoring Rey all the while.

For a moment, Rey was tempted to let things go back to the way they had been before. She could get up and leave the kitchen. She could return to wandering the facility's corridors alone, giving its only other human occupant a wide berth.

But a few lingering questions still buzzed in her mind. And besides, she found her irritation with Kylo dissipating as she watched him prepare the meal. There was something calm and methodical in the way he went about it, so unlike the way he spoke, fought, or otherwise behaved. Rey wondered if long ago, someone—Leia, Han, maybe even Luke—taught him how to cook.

Kylo turned back from the counter, carrying a steaming bowl of what looked like stew. He raised his eyebrows when he caught sight of Rey sitting at the table; maybe he hadn't realized she was still there.

Rey selected the first question that occurred to her. "So why did the Telosians abandon their irrigation system? It's obviously been a long time since anyone besides smugglers has been here."

Kylo regarded her for a few seconds, as though considering how to answer. Then he sat down opposite her. "Did you learn about the Jedi Civil War in school?"

He seemed to realize his mistake a split-second after the words left his mouth. Rey favored him with a cutting, mock-gracious smile. Sometimes anger bubbled up inside her, filling her to the brim; now she felt like it had hollowed her out instead.

"No, sadly that wasn't part of the curriculum at the scavenger academy."

Kylo stared down at his bowl of stew and said nothing, his features rigid. Whether he was upset with himself for his blunder or annoyed by Rey's sarcasm, she couldn't tell, and she found she didn't much care.

"But I did come across bits and pieces of the Imperial archives," Rey went on. "Was the Jedi Civil War the one where the two Knights went rogue and tried to start a new Sith empire?"

She remembered reading something to that effect on the flickering screen of a salvaged datapad.

Kylo looked up and nodded, apparently relieved that they had moved on from the subject of Rey's childhood. "Yes, and Telos was one of the first worlds the Sith conquered. When its leaders refused to surrender, they hit the planet with a massive surface bombardment. The facility was evacuated in the early stages of the raid."

_Bombardment._ "That's what HK said caused the geomagnetic storms."

Kylo nodded again. "Telos had always been affiliated with the Jedi. That's why it was targeted so early in the war. After the facility was abandoned, the Jedi moved in and essentially started using it as a warehouse for artifacts they didn't want stolen or destroyed by the Sith. If I had to guess, I'd say they used mind tricks to make the Telosians forget the facility existed at all."

_A warehouse._ Rey frowned. "But I haven't found anything that looks like a Jedi artifact."

"Well no, you wouldn't." Kylo turned his attention back to his stew, which he stirred slowly with a spoon. "Smugglers, remember?"

Rey felt a brief flash of irritation towards the smugglers before she realized that, only a few years ago, she would have done exactly the same thing. She couldn't help but speculate how many portions a genuine Jedi artifact would have netted her back on Jakku.

"But that doesn't explain why the Jedi abandoned the facility," she pointed out.

"Since when have the Jedi ever made sense?"

Rey wondered if Kylo knew, in that moment, just how much he sounded like his uncle.

Neither spoke for a few minutes. Kylo stirred his stew while Rey puzzled over the missing Jedi artifacts. Were there any left in the facility? Any that the smugglers had missed? And if so, where would they be hidden?

A loud scrape of metal against the rim of the bowl brought her attention back to Kylo. He still hadn't touched his stew; it occurred to Rey that the stuff must be stone cold by now.

Her gaze traveled from the bowl to Kylo's rolled-up sleeves and exposed forearms, where he sported a pair of nasty bruises. They looked a lot like the ones she saw splotched across his ribs that day in the hot springs.

To distract herself from the mental image, she gestured to his arms. "Did your droid give you those, too?"

Kylo glanced up at her, then down at the bruises. "Yes. I fumbled a block."

Rey stared at him. It was the first time she had heard him admit to an error without a trace of self-consciousness in his voice.

Kylo's brows drew together, and he sat up a little straighter. He appeared to be steeling himself for something.

Abruptly, he asked, "Do you want to spar with me?"

The _no_ almost came to her lips. But then Rey thought of the months stretching out ahead of her. She thought about how good it would feel to _move_ again, to strike and spin with the warm weight of a staff in her hands. And, inexplicably, she thought of Kylo, standing at the kitchen counter, fastidiously preparing his breakfast.

"All right," she said.

 

***

 

They met the next day in the circular sparring chamber Rey had spent the past week avoiding. When she arrived, she found Kylo waiting at the room's center, absently spinning a long staff made of some unfamiliar pale metal. He stopped when he caught sight of her. Rey wondered if he was surprised that she actually turned up.

"Why are you barefoot?" she asked, more to break the silence than anything else.

Kylo glanced down. "I like to feel the ground underneath me. It helps with my footwork."

Rey wanted to tell him that he sounded a lot like someone who had learned to fight indoors, in well-lit rooms, against opponents who didn't truly mean to harm him.

"Do you mind if I keep my boots on?" she asked instead.

Kylo shrugged. "Whatever you want."

There was a matching staff leaning against the opposite wall. Kylo called it to him with the Force, then tossed it to Rey. She caught it, instantly marveling at its lightness. Moving through a series of experimental jabs and slashes, she grew comfortable with the weapon much more quickly than she expected.

Rey looked up to find Kylo watching her closely. For once the scrutiny didn't unnerve her.

She gave the staff a twirl. "Are you sure these aren't Jedi artifacts?"

Kylo shook his head. "The Jedi might have brought them here, but they're Echani design."

"Echani?"

"An Inner Rim species. They believe combat is the most natural form of communication."

Rey considered this. Fighting side-by-side with Kylo against Snoke's guards had felt much more _natural_ to her than any of their recent stilted conversations. She wondered if Kylo felt the same, if that was why he wanted to spar with her.

Kylo's voice cut through her thoughts. "What kind of drills did Skywalker have you doing?"

Rey blinked. "What?"

"What did he teach you, on the island? Did he take you through the Forms? I thought I saw you using modified Shii-Cho techniques in the throne room."

Rey's posture stiffened. "I don't know what a _Shii-Cho_ is. And Luke didn't teach me to fight. I can honestly say he taught me more about aquatic mammals than anything to do with fighting."

She knew she sounded bitter, petulant. Moreover, she knew Luke didn't deserve her ire. He had saved them all, that day on Crait, and reignited the Galaxy's faith in the Jedi. If not for his sacrifice, the Resistance as she knew it would not exist. But she still harbored a flicker of resentment for those wasted days on Ahch-To, days she could have spent learning from a true Jedi Master instead of a few moldering old texts.

Kylo, who had been watching her keenly again, suddenly straightened up. "Good," he said. "I spent years unlearning what Skywalker taught me. He was too rigid. He didn't want us to trust our instincts." He nodded to Rey and slipped into what was unmistakably a fighting stance. "I don't have that problem anymore, and I don't think you do either."

Rey shifted to the balls of her feet, ready to charge, to block, to strike—whatever the moment called for. She could almost feel the hot desert wind on her face. This was her element.

"No," she said. "I don't."

Kylo lunged for her then, and Rey leapt to meet him, the Force rising up inside her and suffusing her with its strength. The chamber rang with the clash of metal on metal.

_The most natural form of communication,_ Kylo had said.

_Maybe now,_ Rey thought wryly, _we can finally speak to each other._

 

***

 

After a few more sparring sessions, Rey concluded that she and Kylo were nearly evenly matched. Kylo had the advantage of size and strength, but Rey was quicker and more agile. Their sessions usually ended with both of them sweaty, exhausted, and bruised.

Rey expected this to anger Kylo. After all, he had spent most of his life in formal combat training, whereas Rey was almost entirely self-taught. But Kylo didn't seem to mind in the least. In fact he appeared to enjoy it when Rey managed to slip past his defenses and deliver a blow. He would raise his eyebrows, and one corner of his mouth would quirk up into something that wasn't quite a smile before he ran at her again, faster and more determined than before.

They each learned new things from the other. In spite of his general disdain for Jedi teachings, Kylo showed her bits and pieces of the Forms.

"They're fine to use for individual techniques," he told her, "but committing to any one style makes it too easy to predict what you'll do next. Your enemies will use that against you.”

In turn, Rey taught Kylo a few less-conventional moves she had picked up on Jakku. More than half involved a strike to the opponent's groin.

"Of course they're most effective against males," Rey conceded. "But the female scavengers weren't the ones giving me trouble."

Such a black look crossed Kylo's features when she said this that Rey resolved never to bring up the subject again.

They didn't see much of each other outside the sparring chamber. Rey continued to avoid the kitchen during Kylo's preferred mealtimes, and she didn't even _look_ at the stairs leading down to the hot springs. Instead, she scoured the facility for any remaining trace of Jedi artifacts. If the smugglers had left even one behind, Rey was determined to find it.

It was no use. Either the smugglers had truly picked the facility clean, or the artifacts were hidden so well that even an expert scavenger like Rey couldn't find them.

One thing she _did_ find was Kylo's droid. During Rey's earlier explorations, she and HK had rarely crossed paths. Now it seemed like the droid was never far away—always standing ahead of her at the intersection of two corridors, exiting a chamber off to her side, or trailing behind her somewhere, just out of sight.

One day, in a fit of exasperation, Rey spun around to confront the droid, who had been dogging her footsteps for the past hour.

"Why are you following me?"

HK looked as affronted as it was possible for a droid to look. "Retort: I am not following you, female organic. I am securing the perimeter around my master's location, in keeping my with programming."

Rey was tempted to point out that HK never seemed to care much about perimeter security back when it was Kylo's sole sparring partner. But saying that was likely to spark a pointless argument, and Rey felt like she had participated in too many of those lately.

"Fine," she said. "But if you're going to stalk me, just be more subtle about it, all right? It's distracting, listening to you clanking around behind me all the time."

At the start of her next training session with Kylo, while they sat on the floor at opposite sides of the room and stretched, Rey brought up her encounter with the droid.

"I think HK might be jealous of me," she said without preamble.

Kylo, who had been staring off into the distance, evidently lost in thought, snapped his attention to her at once. "What?"

"Your droid seems to miss training with you. It's been following me around instead. I think it’s a jealousy thing.”

Kylo frowned. "Droids don't get jealous."

That elicited a snort from Rey. She had seen droids get _incredibly_ jealous. BB-8 in particular would spend entire days in huffy silence if Finn or Poe paid too much attention to another astromech.

"Either way, I prefer sparring with you," Kylo said.

Rey wasn't sure how to respond to that. Kylo's bouts of earnestness always disarmed her.

"Uh, thanks?"

"It's better to train against a Force-sensitive opponent," he went on, hooking one leg over the other to stretch out his right hip. "You wouldn't be much of a challenge otherwise."

Every benign sentiment Rey had ever felt towards Kylo evaporated in an instant. "What do you mean by that?" she demanded.

Kylo didn't look remotely taken aback by her tone. "I mean, I have about twenty centimeters on you." His eyes skimmed her body, and Rey fought the absurd impulse to cover herself. "And at least thirty kilos."

"I've taken down bigger men than you," Rey shot back. "I'm fast, and you should know by now that I'm stronger than I look."

"You had help from the Force, even though you might not have realized it at the time. Speed will only get you so far."

Rey leapt to her feet. A red film seemed to have descended over her vision. She thought of nothing except how good it would feel to beat every last scrap of arrogance out of Kylo Ren.

Kylo stood as well. He looked maddeningly _amused_ by her reaction. "You don't believe me?"

"I think you're full of yourself and absolutely full of shit," Rey spat.

Kylo's grin faltered, his expression turning ugly. "Why don't we find out? Cut yourself off from the Force. I'll do the same. And then we'll see how long you can stand against me."

_Cut yourself off from the Force._ Trepidation jolted through Rey. She knew Kylo didn't mean to harm her. She had seen as much in his mind. So why did that suggestion feel like a trap?

After a few more seconds of silence, Kylo shrugged with poorly-feigned nonchalance. "Or you can admit that I'm right, and we'll go back to sparring like usual."

Rey glared. "I'm not admitting anything."

She wasn't immediately sure how to cut herself off from the Force, so she tried the first thing that came to mind—the same method she used to shut Kylo out of her thoughts. She raised her mental defenses, but now instead of targeting Kylo she targeted—well, everything.

It worked, and it felt terrible: sick and disorienting, like suddenly losing her vision or the use of her hands. How had Luke lived like this for so long?

She glanced up to find Kylo in what appeared to be a similar state, feature screwed up with discomfort. But his gaze hardened when he caught Rey's eye, and he tightened his grip on his staff.

"Ready?" he asked.

_No,_ Rey thought, but she slipped into a defensive stance anyway.

Kylo charged at her.

It was hard, much harder than she had expected. She never realized how much she relied on the Force to guide her movements, to anticipate her opponent's actions and keep her own steps graceful. Her one solace was that Kylo was operating under the same handicap.

Still, Rey struggled. She was fast, yes, but Kylo was relentless and _strong_. Rey knew that without the Force's protection, one direct strike from him would be enough to bring her down. So she stayed on the defensive—blocking and dodging— as Kylo slowly but inexorably drove her out of the sparring circle and towards the chamber's curved far wall.

Soon she would be trapped, and Kylo knew it. He smirked at Rey as he forced her back another pace.

Something inside her broke. Before she knew what she was doing, Rey reversed her retreat and sprang at Kylo, snarling, staff poised to deliver a vicious blow.

Only her feet never made it back to the ground. In an instant, her legs were swept out from under her, and she fell hard to the floor, staff clattering away, all the air knocked from her lungs. 

Kylo loomed over her, his grin even wider now. "See?"

The red film obscured Rey's vision again. She tried to jump to her feet, but Kylo was on top of her before she could move, keeping her down with his weight. Undeterred, Rey took a swing at him, but Kylo caught both her wrists and pinned them over her head. He held firm as she writhed, trying to twist out of his grip.

It was no good. She was helpless, immobilized beneath him. Rey wondered if it was possible to die of rage and humiliation.

She looked up at Kylo, expecting to see him smirking back down at her, triumphant.

But he wasn't smirking. He wasn't even smiling any more. Instead he stared at her with something wild and searching in his eyes. Rey suddenly realized how _close_ they were like this, closer than they ever had been, with his warm and solid weight pressed against her and their faces just inches apart. She would only need to raise her head a little to—

No.

The Force came flooding back to her unbidden, and she channeled all of it into repelling Kylo, into breaking the spell of whatever madness had claimed her. He landed hard somewhere across the room, letting out a grunt of pain and surprise.

Rey got shakily to her feet. She watched Kylo struggle to prop himself up on his elbows.

"You cheated," he said. He sounded more shocked than upset.

Rey nodded. She felt the Force acutely after its brief absence, thrumming in her veins and swirling all around her. Everything seemed hyper-real, magnified. She wondered how long it would take her heart rate to return to normal.

Kylo made it into a sitting position. "Why? I wasn't going to hurt you."

"I know. I don't have a good reason. You won fair and square."

A line appeared between Kylo's brows. "I shouldn't have—" he began.

Rey waved him off. "It's fine. You were right." With some effort, she affected a rueful little smile. "I'm nothing without the Force."

Kylo's frown deepened. "Rey, I never said that."

Rey found she couldn't look at him. Her head was spinning. She wanted to lie down. She wanted to be alone.

"I think I'm done sparring for today," she told him, and fled the room.

 

***

 

Sleep would not come to her.

Rey lay curled in the co-pilot's seat on the Falcon. It occurred to her that she might be more comfortable in the double bed in the captain's quarters, but sleeping there always struck her as somehow disrespectful to Han's memory. And at any rate, the co-pilot's chair was much cozier than some of the places she had slept on Jakku.

So why couldn't she fall asleep now? Physically, she was beyond exhausted. Every muscle in her body ached. Facing off against Kylo without the Force's aid had required her to tap into energy reserves she hadn’t known she possessed. By all rights, she should have passed out the second her head hit the cushioned seat-back.

But her thoughts refused to stop racing. Her mind refused to stop replaying that moment in the sparring chamber when Kylo held her down, and Rey imagined—absurdly, idiotically, _traitorously_ —kissing him.

She felt feverish with shame. She had never kissed anyone. She had never really wanted to, before now. Sometimes she found herself envying the happy couples she saw in the Resistance, but only because she coveted their emotional intimacy, the deep connection they seemed to share. The physical aspect of their relationships never held much appeal for her.

But now the physical aspect was all she could think about: the weight and heat of Kylo on top of her, the way his lips looked soft and chapped at the same time. With a fresh wave of self-loathing, Rey realized that a part of her had _liked_ being pinned underneath him. Another part of her wanted to roll them both over so Rey could be on top.

She groaned and curled into a ball, burying her face in her knees. She wondered if witnessing Kylo's pornographic thoughts about her had infected her own mind, somehow. She wondered if this was a horrible side-effect of their bond, one that persisted even after she deliberately shut him out. But above all, she wondered what it would feel like to be that girl in Kylo's fantasies, the one who straddled him, who bent over for him, who wrapped her legs around his waist.

The Rey of Kylo's fantasies was an idealized version. He imagined her free of scars and tan lines; instead she was golden-skinned and smattered with freckles all over. It was ridiculous. Did he think she used to spend her days lying naked in the Jakku sun?

But if Kylo could have his idealized version of her, then Rey could have her idealized version of him. She could have a version who never fell to the dark side, who never turned against Luke, never murdered Han. She could have Ben Solo the way he always should have been. And then maybe she could think about kissing him without this poison guilt eating away at her.

Rey closed her eyes. She pictured Kylo— _Ben_ —kneeling in front of her. She she imagined winding her fingers through that dark, thick hair and guiding him between her thighs.

(She knew couples did things like this for each other; she once overheard Kaydel and Rose talking about it in the mess hall.)

Rey bit her lip. After a brief, internal struggle, the last piece of her self-control crumbled away. She unbuttoned her trousers and moved a hand beneath the waistband.

With this, at least, she had plenty of experience.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *waggles eyebrows*


End file.
